the harriman institute at columbia university

SUMMER 2014

The Dancers The Harriman and Russian Ballet

Bosnian Spring Signals New Possibilities

How to Read Chekhov Ukraine’s Third Attempt Gary Shteyngart on Little Failure Harriman Magazine is published biannually by the Harriman Institute.

Managing Editor: Ronald Meyer Editor: Masha Udensiva-Brenner

Comments, suggestions, or address changes may be e-mailed to Masha Udensiva-Brenner at [email protected].

Cover photo by Nina Alovert: Vera Arbuzova in Red Giselle, choreography by Boris Eifman (1997) Photo, right, by Nina Alovert: Yulia Makhalina, Studio, Mariinsky Theatre (1992)

Design and Production: Columbia Creative

Harriman Institute Timothy Frye, Director Alexander Cooley, Deputy Director for Social Sciences Programming Kimberly Marten, Deputy Director for Development Alan Timberlake, Deputy Director for Humanities Programming Alla Rachkov, Associate Director

Harriman Institute Columbia University 420 West 118th Street New York, NY 10027

Tel: 212-854-4623 Fax: 212-666-3481

For the latest news and updates about the Harriman Institute, visit harriman.columbia.edu.

Stay connected through Facebook and Twitter!

www.twitter.com/HarrimanInst

www.facebook.com/TheHarrimanInstitute A From the Director

he crisis in Ukraine and protests in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) have made this calendar year an exceptionally eventful one for our region. This issue profiles T Alexander Vershbow, Russian Institute alumnus, deputy secretary general of NATO, and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, South Korea, and NATO, who provided a thoughtful perspective on the crisis in Ukraine in his April 2014 speech titled, “A New Strategic Reality in Europe.” In addition, Mykalo Riabchuk, a former Harriman Institute Petro Jacyk Visiting Professor, draws on various scholarly and journalistic arguments to analyze the sources of the Maidan protests and Ukraine’s deeper struggle to balance Eastern and Western influences. Turning to the political unrest in BiH, Tanya Domi, adjunct professor of international and public affairs, and Jasmin Mujanovic, visiting scholar at the Harriman Institute, find hope in the creation of grassroots popular assemblies to address deep political cleavages. In these challenging times, historical perspective is in high demand and, too often, short supply. In a profile of the late Peter H. Juviler, professor emeritus of political science at Barnard College and cofounder of Barnard’s human rights program, we see what it was like to travel to the USSR in 1956 as one of the first U.S. graduate students to visit the region after the Stalin years. Tom Kent, adjunct professor of journalism and of international and public affairs, who was a correspondent in Moscow during the Brezhnev years, reflects on reasons for the survival of Brezhnev’s failing regime, giving us a taste of life during the last years of the Soviet Union. Then, on a more humorous note, the award-winning author, Gary Shteyngart, a Harriman faculty member, discusses his new memoir, Little Failure, and what it was like to come to the United States from Leningrad as a seven-year-old. We were fortunate to host Shteyngart for a reading and discussion this spring, and you can find photographs of the event accompanying the interview (to watch the video, go here: harriman.columbia.edu/event/reading-and-conversation-gary-shteyngart). We also have a special treat. Last fall, we had the pleasure of mounting Nina Alovert’s “The Dancers,” a retrospective of her photographs of Russian ballet in the Soviet Union and the United States from the 1960s to the twenty-first century. You can find some of these photographs within the pages of this magazine. We’ve also profiled Stephen Reidy, a former Russian Institute student who currently sits on the board of the New York City Ballet. And, last but not least in the ballet section, we have a piece on the prominent ballet historian and Harriman faculty member Lynn Garafola, who won fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for the year 2013–14 to support research for her biography of Bronislava Nijinska. In addition, Cathy Popkin of Columbia’s Slavic Department recently published the new Norton Critical Edition of Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories. We are thrilled to reprint excerpts from her Introduction as well as a story from the collection. We hope you enjoy this issue and look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas for future stories.

Timothy Frye Director, Harriman Institute

harriman magazine ­­ | 1 ­­ SUMMER 2014 / Volume 2, Number 1

32 8

Alexander Vershbow in Profile Cover STORY By Ronald Meyer The Dancers: The Harriman and Russian Ballet Deputy secretary general of NATO Alexander Vershbow began building his By Ronald Meyer expertise in arms control and security A look at the Harriman Institute’s ties to Russian ballet, for many the while attending a Russian Institute graduate quintessential Russian art form, through the eyes of photographer Nina seminar taught by Marshall Shulman. He credits his expertise on Russia and Eastern Alovert; former Russian Institute student Stephen Reidy, who now sits Europe, gained at Columbia, for equipping on the board of New York City Ballet; and distinguished Harriman him for the broader responsibilities he faculty member and dance historian Lynn Garafola. shouldered as director of Soviet Union affairs and U.S. ambassador to Russia.

The Dancers: A Photo Lynn Garafola and Her Journey Exhibition by Nina Alovert as a Dance Historian Peter H. Juviler, 1926–2013 By Masha Udensiva-Brenner On the life and work of the the Harriman Institute’s 2011 Alumnus of the Year and cofounder of Barnard’s Human Rights Program—the first of its kind in the Baryshnikov/Balanchine: United States. A Profile of Stephen K. Reidy

2 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ CONTENTS

22 16 52

Russia in the Late Years of Soviet Ukraine’s Third Attempt In Memoriam Rule: Why Did Citizens Comply with By Mykola Riabchuk a Failing Regime? An examination of the Euromaidan protests By Thomas Kent and what they tell us about the current Thomas Kent, adjunct associate professor situation in Ukraine. of journalism and of international and Alumni & Postdoc Notes public affairs, was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Moscow from 1976 to 1978 and from 1979 to 1981. In this piece he answers an often-asked question: Why did Russians put up with the privations of Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories life in the late years of Soviet rule? Edited by Cathy Popkin Giving to Harriman How to Read Chekhov,” from Cathy Popkin’s Introduction to the Norton Critical Edition of Chekhov’s Selected Stories, followed by Katherine Tiernan O’Connor’s translation of “A Little Game.” Bosnian Spring Signals New Possibilities for Bosnia-Herzegovina By Jasmin Mujanovic and Tanya L. Domi Can Bosnia-Herzegovina leave behind the corruption and discontent it has faced Gary Shteyngart’s Little Failure during these past two decades? By Masha Udensiva-Brenner The author discusses life as a Soviet immigrant in the 1980s and the challenges of writing.

harriman magazine ­­ | 3 ­­ The Kremlin Embankment, Moscow (photo by Dmitry Azovtsev)

By Ronald Meyer Alexander Vershbow in Profile

4 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

n April 2014, Alexander Vershbow (Russian Institute ’76), issues”—including missile defense cooperation, nonstrategic nuclear deputy secretary general of NATO, delivered a speech on “A weapons, and military transparency. New Strategic Reality in Europe” to the twenty-first International Vershbow traces his expertise in arms control back to a graduate I Conference on Euro-Atlantic Security (Krakow, Poland) that seminar at Columbia taught by Marshall Shulman, whom he opens with the statement, “For twenty years, the security of the characterizes as “one of the all-time great experts on Soviet foreign Euro-Atlantic region has been based on the premise that we do policy.” At the time of Vershbow’s tenure at the Russian Institute not face an adversary to our east. This premise is now in doubt.” in the mid-1970s, the subject of arms control was relatively new— Vershbow has devoted much of his distinguished career to the goal the first Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements (SALT) were signed of building an inclusive, integrated European security system that in 1972, amid fears that advances in U.S. and Soviet technology not only put an end to Cold War divisions, including opening would outpace the ability of negotiators to produce verifiable agree- NATO to new members in Eastern Europe, but also provided a ments to limit the nuclear arms race. In his paper for Shulman’s central role for a democratic Russia. As Vershbow points out, how- class, Vershbow examined the emerging cruise missile, whose tiny ever, “Russia’s recent actions against Ukraine have been a wake-up size and versatility made it difficult to verify with satellite imagery. call for everyone in the Euro-Atlantic community. They follow a The paper, which argued for unilateral renunciation of the system in pattern of behavior that we already observed in Transnistria, South order to save the arms control process, appeared in Foreign Affairs Ossetia and Abkhazia. The pattern is to influence, destabilize and in the summer of 1976, just before Vershbow joined the U.S. even intervene in countries on Russia’s borders, to prolong ‘frozen’ Foreign Service. The fledgling Carter administration did not adopt conflicts by supporting corrupt, separatist groups, and to thereby Vershbow’s radical proposal, but the article did pave the way for him deny sovereign states the ability to choose their own security to work on nuclear arms issues in his first State Department assign- arrangements and to chart their own political destinies.” Vershbow, ment, which included several stints as an adviser to the SALT talks an expert on issues related to missile defense and nuclear arms, in Geneva (a rare experience for a first-tour officer) and facilitated notes in the same speech that even before the recent crisis, the a Moscow assignment for his second tour. Vershbow maintains that scope of NATO-Russia cooperation had narrowed as “Moscow his political-military expertise helped prepare him for his many assumed an obstructionist, zero-sum stance on virtually all major NATO postings, including U.S. ambassador to NATO (1998–

harriman magazine ­­ | 5 ­­ Vershbow credits the expertise on Russia and Eastern peared.” Lessons from the Russian Institute stuck with Vershbow. Twenty-five years Europe that he gained at Columbia for equipping him for after he finished his studies, when he was the broader responsibilities he shouldered as director State Department director of Soviet Union affairs and charged with “the unraveling of of Soviet Union affairs in the late 1980s, and as U.S. the USSR and the emergence of conflicts ambassador to Russia from 2001 to 2005. in hitherto unheard of places like Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya,” he was reminded of Allworth and his pioneer- 2001), service on the START delegation, ing course on Soviet nationalities, which as well as his more recent assignment to the seemed a bit esoteric at the time. To quote Department of Defense (2009–11), where Vershbow, “Some of the issues I learned he served as assistant secretary of defense about from Allworth are with us today, for International Security Affairs. including the fate of the Crimean Tatars.” Vershbow credits the expertise on Russia With more than thirty years in the and Eastern Europe that he gained at Foreign Service and three major ambassador- Columbia for equipping him for the broader ships (Russia, NATO, Republic of Korea), responsibilities he shouldered as director of Vershbow candidly admits that he did not Soviet Union affairs in the late 1980s, and pass the Service’s exam on his first try while as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2001 to a Columbia graduate student. His advice to 2005. His interest in Russian affairs, how- prospective candidates is “take the Foreign ever, dates from when he was in the tenth Service exam as many times as necessary grade at the Browne and Nichols School in till you get in!” The Service, according to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and opted for Vershbow, is looking for both generalists Russian over chemistry. (When he returned and specialists, but he recommends “devel- Ambassador Vershbow and his wife Lisa attend to his high school as U.S. ambassador to oping a particular regional expertise in order the Pushkin Ball. Below, North Atlantic Treaty Russia in 2003 and delivered a serious to get a leg up on your peers, but branch Organization countries highlighted in blue lecture on U.S.-Russian relations, his twelve- out a bit once you’re in the Service.” (Patrick Neil / CC-BY-SA-3.0). year-old nephew, sitting in the audience, Vershbow did indeed “branch out”: said that he had convinced him “to choose after his post in Moscow, he took on the chemistry.”) With a 1969 summer language ambassadorship in Seoul. Even though he program in the USSR under his belt, had no experience in Asian affairs, there Vershbow went on to major in Russian and were several connections to his previous East European studies at Yale, where he work: for example, the Korean peninsula is focused on language and history, and wrote the last front in the Cold War, with North his thesis on “The Party and Soviet Music” Korea posing a nuclear and missile threat in the late Stalin period. The decision to to the region, as well as a human rights pursue a career in diplomacy and public challenge; the U.S.–Republic of Korea policy brought him to Columbia’s School military alliance is almost as important to of International and Public Affairs. stability in Asia as NATO is in Europe; From his days at the Russian Institute, and the experience he gained in Moscow Vershbow remembers most vividly his “out- working on trade issues equipped him to standing professors”—Marshall Shulman, play a major role in the negotiation of the Zbigniew Brzezinski, Seweryn Bialer, John Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. More- Hazard, Edward Allworth—each of whom over, the assignment allowed Vershbow presented “a different slant on how to and his wife Lisa to savor the contrasts of understand the USSR and the Soviet bloc, Korea’s ancient traditions and today’s high- the influence of Russian history, and the tech culture and experience the “ambitious, role of ideology.” He learned then how the brash but wonderful people” in one of the Soviet system, “while brutal and oppressive, “most impressive countries, both economi- was weaker and less monolithic than it ap- cally and culturally.” PROFILES

In addition to the diplomatic contributions Department of Defense’s Distinguished 2005 has helped him to enable colleagues made during his three ambassadorships, Civil Service Medal (2012) and the State to better understand the challenges posed Vershbow proudly points to his work as a Department’s Cordell Hull Award for by the current crisis in Ukraine. Moreover, cultural ambassador—hosting concerts and Economic Achievement for his contribu- as NATO expands its partnerships to coun- art exhibitions (with the help of his wife, a tions to negotiations on the Korea-U.S. tries in the Middle East, North Africa, and professional artist). And he has personally Free Trade Agreement (2007). He singles the Asia-Pacific region, Vershbow’s work at contributed in his own small way through out, however, for particular mention the the Pentagon, which had a major Middle frequent performances as a rock-and-roll Anatoly Sharansky Freedom Award (2009), East component, and as ambassador to drummer with Russian and Korean bands, for his work in freeing the hundreds of South Korea has given him the necessary and as a member of Coalition of the Willing, “refuseniks” denied the right to emigrate global perspective. It is as if all the different “with other national security wonks.” from the USSR; the American Bar threads of Vershbow’s distinguished profes- Vershbow retired from the Foreign Association’s Ambassador’s Award (2004), sional career have been drawn together as Service in 2008, but this was not the end for his promotion of democracy and deputy secretary general of NATO. of public service. Former colleagues recom- outspoken criticism of Putin’s rollback of Right now all eyes are on Russia and mended him to the Obama administration, media freedom and civil society; and the Ukraine. NATO, Vershbow states, will and he was offered the post of assistant Department of Defense Joseph Kruzel continue to engage in dialogue with Moscow secretary of defense for International Award (1997), presented to Vershbow in the NATO-Russia Council but will have Security Affairs (ISA), part of the (mostly when he was at the National Security no choice but to treat Russia as an adversary civilian) Office of the Secretary of Defense. Council, named after one of three close rather than a partner until it de-escalates ISA has been dubbed the Pentagon’s “mini colleagues who were killed in Bosnia at the crisis and abandons its efforts to restore State Department” and has been headed the start of the 1995 diplomatic initiative hegemony over its neighbors. NATO is by senior diplomats in the past, so the that led to the Dayton Peace Accords. redoubling its efforts to support Ukraine, assignment was not as much of a culture Vershbow’s experience in the Foreign Georgia, Moldova, and other former shock as it might seem. The ISA’s focus Service and Department of Defense seems Soviet states—both politically and through on security policy toward Europe, Russia, to have been ideal preparation for his work assistance to their defense sectors—to the Middle East, and Africa proved to be a today as NATO deputy secretary general, uphold the principle that all states should challenging portfolio indeed. The assign- since he arrived with an understanding of have the freedom to choose their security ment, Vershbow says, gave him greater of the issues, the culture and working relationships. In Vershbow’s opinion, NATO understanding of the military as the methods of NATO, and the complexities will not be the main player—the bigger U.S. wound down the wars in Iraq and of taking all decisions by consensus. “I’ve challenge is for the United States and Afghanistan, and an opportunity to renew also acquired a lot of experience, at NATO the European Union to come up with an his engagement in NATO and Russia and in Washington, dealing with military effective strategy to help these countries policy, including the “reset,” NATO’s new strategy, defense capabilities, and intelli- politically and economically. □ Strategic Concept, and the operation to gence—all part of my portfolio as deputy protect civilians in Libya. secretary general,” he said. At the same Vershbow has received numerous time, firsthand experience dealing with awards for his service, including the Putin’s Russia as ambassador from 2001 to

From left to right: Vershbow and President Putin (© Presidential Press and Information Office / www.kremlin.ru / CC-BY-SA-3.0); Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and Vershbow; Vershbow delivers farewell speech at the ambassador’s Moscow residence.

harriman magazine ­­ | 7 ­­ By Masha Udensiva-Brenner Peter H. Juviler 1926–2013

ON the LIFE AND WORK OF THE Harriman Institute’s 2011 Alumnus of the Year and cofounder of Barnard’s Human Rights Program— the first of its kind in the UNITED STATES

y all accounts, Peter H. Juviler was a gentleman. A man (Surviving friends and relatives visited the Juvilers in New York; of refined appearance and tastes—blazers, pleated trousers, the family was once evicted from a home in Queens for having and an enduring passion for art and classical music—he too many Jewish guests.) After a period of financial hardship and B had an insatiable curiosity about life, and the rare ability constant relocation, the Juvilers settled on Manhattan’s Upper to connect and empathize with people regardless of social standing West Side. or political leanings. Though he lived through the times of World Meanwhile, Juviler was growing into a scholarly teenager. He War II, and suffered discrimination as a Jew, Juviler maintained lined his walls with books like Lawrence of Arabia and spent much a firm belief in the intrinsic goodness of humankind. Students of the time studying at his desk. (“I was a real nuisance and con- and colleagues remember him as a “hero,” a man of unshakable stantly trying to interrupt him,” remembers Michael, “but he was principles and someone who valued their opinions, no matter how always very patient with me.”) Having skipped two grades, Juviler trite. Always putting himself on the line for the sake of knowledge, graduated from the Franklin School (now Dwight) at age sixteen he studied communism at the height of McCarthyism, brought and received awards in nearly every subject. He enrolled at Yale, members of the radical Black Panthers Party to Barnard College studied electrical engineering for three years, and interrupted his in the midst of extreme racial tensions, and helped popularize the course work to enlist in the U.S. Navy. Stationed in Monterey, he field of human rights when few scholars took it seriously as an oversaw radar on a repair ship and waited to invade Japan. One academic enterprise. 1945 August morning, in the navy mess hall, he opened the news- Juviler was born in London, into a musical Jewish family. His paper to a surprise: the U.S. had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. mother, Katherine, of Russian and German descent, was a pro- He was both troubled by the use of atomic weapons and frustrated fessional pianist who had studied under the British pianist Dame that he lost the chance to be a hero. The war over, he returned to Myra Hess, and his father, Adolphe, a successful Polish entrepre- Yale, finished his B.E. in 1948, stayed another year for an M.E., neur who imported and sold German musical instruments. The and was hired by the Sperry Corporation. couple led a life of art and high culture, associating with the likes It was not long before he became unsatisfied with his career. Not of Marc Chagall and Raoul Dufy. But, in the late ’30s, Adolphe only did he hate being stuck in a lab all day dealing with machines fell seriously ill and lost his business. In 1939, they left London for (as a Jew, he was forced to sit in the back—Sperry didn’t want him New York with their two sons (Juviler was thirteen at the time, his interacting with the clients), but he was also discontented with younger brother, Michael, was three) in search of better medical his position in the context of the international climate. In 1950, treatment. The move was supposed to be temporary, but then as part of Truman’s “containment” policy against the spread of World War II broke out, London was bombed for eight months communism, the United States entered the Korean War to defend straight, and many of Adolphe’s kin perished in the Holocaust. South Korea from invasion by the USSR and China-backed North

8 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

Peter Juviler, 1985 (photo by Stephen Bramberg, courtesy of Barnard College Archives)

harriman magazine ­­ | 9 ­­ Juviler with students in 1986 (photo by G. Steve Jordan, courtesy of Barnard College Archives)

Korean People’s Army. In the U.S., the war was portrayed as a education took Juviler only so far. He wanted to travel to the battle between good and evil: the communists against defenders USSR, where, since World War II, Stalin had allowed few foreigners. of freedom. Juviler, who had spent more than two years design- “Now it’s the most natural thing to go anywhere you choose,” ing equipment for military ships, questioned this simplicity. He says his former classmate George Sherman. “But at that time the despised the fact that he felt like a cog in a machine; he wanted to Soviet Union was a big blank for most of the outside world.” understand how the cogs worked. The atmosphere changed in March 1953, when Stalin suddenly In hopes of getting to the root of international tensions, Juviler died of a stroke. A battle for power ensued within the Kremlin, quit his job and, in the fall of 1952, enrolled in a master’s program and Nikita Khrushchev, vying for succession, started advocating at Columbia University’s Department of Law and Government, peaceful coexistence with the U.S. by granting interviews to the where he embarked on a study of the Soviet Union at the Russian Western press. That summer, Juviler went to Middlebury College Institute. During this period he began to take an interest in the for intensive Russian language study; soon he and seven classmates philosophies of Marx and Engels and realized that he was not wrote to Khrushchev directly, asking for visas. Khrushchev entirely unsympathetic to their ideas. Unable to advertise these responded, but he granted only four, for travel in the summer interests during the McCarthy era, he and fellow students disguised of 1954. For unknown reasons, Juviler, along with Sherman, any books about communism in white jackets. But classroom was denied.

“Now it’s the most natural thing to go anywhere you choose, but at that time the Soviet Union was a big blank for most of the outside world.” —George Sherman, former classmate

10 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

But before they could even get to the USSR, they had to immunize their motives against McCarthyism. As a precaution, Juviler wrote a letter to the prominent Sovietologist Philip Mosley, at that time director of the Russian Institute.

When their friends returned after the monthlong trip and spoke of the wonderful time they had had, Juviler and Sherman sent Khrushchev a telegram. Their program over, Juviler, who had com- pleted his master’s thesis on the aims and organization of Soviet Not too many people know this, but my father was education, planned to enroll in the Ph.D. program at Columbia the most accomplished and beautiful rider—razor- in public law and government, while Sherman went to study at straight back, calm, in total sync with and control of the Oxford. In December, Sherman took a vacation to Austria. One animal. He and I used to ride together a lot when I was afternoon, Sherman remembers, he received a call, at the front desk between the ages of about ten and twelve. We would of a ski resort, from Juviler. Khrushchev had granted them two- rent horses and ride them in Central Park around the week visas. reservoir and also in Westchester County. I believe that They would finally have the chance to see the Soviet Union riding horseback, in some way, suited a somewhat regal firsthand, and they wanted to play a role in easing international gracefulness of his and, as such, he was drawn to the tensions by exposing Soviet life to the Western world. Though nei- sport . . . it was one of his very few indulgences and true ther of them had any journalism experience, they pitched a series loves outside of academia.”—Gregory Juviler (son) of articles about their upcoming trip to prominent newspapers, like the New York Times and Herald Tribune. Ultimately, it was the Observer, in London, under the liberal leadership of David Astor, that agreed to publish their accounts of ordinary life in the USSR. But before they could even get to the USSR, they had to immu- nize their motives against McCarthyism. As a precaution, Juviler wrote a letter to the prominent Sovietologist Philip Mosley, at that time director of the Russian Institute. “I have no sympathy for the Soviet system,” he stated, “but am undertaking the trip in order to improve my qualifications as a student, and I hope eventually, scholar of the Soviet area. It would seem that the better we know the USSR, the more surely we’ll be able to guard our democratic way of life.” Sherman theorizes that Juviler’s letter was intended to protect Mosley in the event of any scrutiny about supporting his students in this endeavor. The trip took place in late March of 1955 (still the dead of winter in the USSR). Juviler and Sherman landed in Leningrad and traveled straight to Moscow, where they were surprised that the living conditions of their mighty adversary were in shambles. “Words cannot convey the drabness of the gray and rundown cityscape,” says Sherman. “But it made all the more striking the warmth and eagerness among many of the ordinary people we encountered.” By their dress, he and Juviler were immediately identified as Westerners, and sometimes they had trouble making it past the entrance to the hotel before crowds gathered and asked them mundane questions about life in the U.S. What were their wages? Did everyone really own refrigerators? Homes? Then the police would approach and ask the crowds to move on. Juviler and Sherman would move on as well, and stragglers followed. A few blocks later, the whole scene would repeat itself.

harriman magazine ­­ | 11 ­­ “ As a citizen in this free country,” Juviler wrote to the postmaster in May 1965, demanding his issues of Kommunist, which the post office had stopped delivering, “I do not expect to find the same obstruction of my scholarly work that my counterparts experience in the Soviet Union.”

In the allotted two weeks, Juviler and Sherman also visited spending the 1958–59 academic year studying the Supreme Soviet Leningrad and Kyiv. They rarely had time to sleep and were together at Moscow State University. While his contemporaries studied constantly, often charged with making stressful decisions in an Soviet issues from a military perspective, Juviler applied himself to unpredictable environment. But there was not a tense moment cultural and social issues, such as family reform, gender, sexuality, between them. As a travel companion, Juviler remained calm, and the criminal justice system—topics that paved the way for his reasoned soberly, and extricated them out of even the stickiest eventual interest in human rights. situations, speaking fluent, graceful Russian. (They frequently faced In 1964, after four years of teaching at Hunter College, Juviler police scrutiny for taking unwanted photographs and were once returned to Columbia as associate professor in the Department of forced to sign a confession for accidentally photographing a colonel Government (later the Department of Political Science) at Barnard swigging cognac in a café.) Smoothing things over was “one of Peter’s College. Once again, his professional environment frustrated him. many talents,” says Sherman. “He had a great tenderness and estab- Only this time, it was U.S. government censorship he encountered lished rapport with all types of people almost instantaneously.” as a scholar. Peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union now Upon their return, Juviler and Sherman urged the Ford Foundation, seemed a faraway dream: the countries had come close to destroying which had funded their trip and was starting to take a prominent each other in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and the U.S. role in international affairs, to create a student exchange program was only heading deeper into a proxy war against communism in with the Soviet Union. Three years later, Khrushchev and Eisenhower Vietnam. “As a citizen in this free country,” Juviler wrote to the formally agreed to establish the Inter-University Committee on postmaster in May 1965, demanding his issues of Kommunist, Travel Grants, which eventually became the International Research which the post office had stopped delivering, “I do not expect to and Exchanges Board (IREX) and laid the foundation for future find the same obstruction of my scholarly work that my counter- exchange programs. Juviler participated in the first exchange, parts experience in the Soviet Union.”

12 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

Juviler was deeply distressed by the Vietnam War. In early 1966, One night, while at home listening to the radio, he realized there he wrote to the editors of the New York Times asking, “Are we would be trouble. He walked to campus and joined other faculty going to continue these brutal yet ineffectual raids for the sake of members trying to mediate between the demonstrators and the some tenuous boost in South Vietnamese morale?” Privately, he administration. From then on, Juviler was a member of the Ad Hoc opined in a letter to his more conservative neighbor Maggie, “I Faculty Group, spending days and nights patrolling in front of Low feel deep despair, tinged only by a touch of hope, for the next few Library, separating the occupiers from those who might threaten years. Taxes for war crimes, silent assent in the most heinous acts them. On April 30, at 3:00 a.m., the police stormed occupied of barbarism committed in the name of saving a country we are buildings using tear gas and hitting protesters with their clubs. An destroying to prove what? . . . Maggie, it’s too late to say this, but officer kicked Juviler—outside, barricading the protesters from the read only the parts of the letter you agree with.” The exchange was police—in the ribs (he ultimately had to have surgery), but Juviler, typical for Juviler, who welcomed conversation with those who who never liked drawing attention to himself, reported it only opposed him. At his country house in Delhi, New York, where he when his testimony protected a fellow participant. spent weekends and sabbaticals with his first wife and their two Later that spring Columbia acquiesced to the students’ demands, sons, he would frequently entertain his neighbors, Republican cutting off its ties with the IDA and shelving its plans for the farmers. “It was almost like he used to hold court there,” says his gymnasium, and the protests subsided. But tensions lingered. youngest son Geoffry. “He listened, and also challenged, when Juviler, who had voted against amnesty for protestors because it was discussing political issues.” against his principles to expect pardon after calculated acts of civil In April 1968, the legendary Columbia protests broke out. disobedience, was frustrated by the toxic environment on campus Students were angry about the University’s relationship with the and wanted to channel these tensions into productive classroom Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a think tank affiliated with discussion. He created Modern Political Movements, a course that the U.S. Department of Defense that supported the Vietnam War, would examine the intersection of “ideologies and situations” and and the school’s plans to build a gymnasium, opposed by the function as a safe space for students across the ideological spectrum Harlem community, in city-owned Morningside Park. Juviler initially to discuss contemporary issues, air grievances, and gain real-life watched the events with bemusement from Barnard, through a window that overlooked the Columbia campus. But, as students took over buildings, separating along ideological and racial lines, the tension grew palpable. As an alumnus of Columbia, a profes- Left (facing page): Juviler with fellow faculty in 1990 (photo sor of Columbia students, scholar of communism, and in general, courtesy of Barnard College Archives); right (below): April somebody quite concerned with the issues, Juviler could not stay 23, 1968, Sundial Rally—crowd of people moving toward on the sidelines for long. Low Library (photo by Gerald S. Adler)

harriman magazine ­­ | 13 ­­ From left to right: Faculty (with white armbands) speaking with student occupiers sitting on Low Library ledge outside President Kirk’s Office, 1968 (courtesy of the Office of Public Affairs Protest & Activism photograph collection); view of gymnasium construction site in Morningside Park, 1968 (photo by Steve Ditlea); Harriman director Timothy M. Frye awarding Juviler with the 2011 Alumnus of the Year Award (Columbia University Photography)

exposure. To produce political theater, twice per semester he would “Well, Dennis,” Juviler said, “I didn’t sleep a wink last night.” invite speakers from these movements in consecutive lectures and Juviler was an unforgettable lecturer. He had complete command have them offer opposing views. of his subject, delivering information in an engaging and logical Around this time, Juviler interviewed the Ghandi scholar Dennis manner, and sometimes used song lyrics to illustrate his points. Dalton for a position in the department. Dalton was an American (Dalton calls him “a real punster” and credits much of his own who had been teaching happily at the London School of Economics. teaching success to mimicking his colleague.) Modern Political But his father had fallen ill in New Jersey, and he was planning to Movements soon earned the moniker “The Peter and Dennis Show,” move back to the U.S. He was torn about taking the untenured and its students earned an unmatched education. A multitude of Barnard position, until he returned to London, where a long sup- speakers visited the classroom, including the Marxist American portive letter, sent by special delivery from Juviler, was waiting for dissident Lyndon LaRouche, followed by Ernie Brosang of the him. “That was the clincher,” says Dalton, who was immediately anticommunist and anarchist John Birch Society. Perhaps the most struck by Juviler’s openness and the unique combination of charm memorable class featured members of the Black Panther Party and humility the scholar projected. arriving at Lehman Hall in full regalia, flanked by two armed body When Dalton arrived at Columbia later in the year, long after guards, touting an ideology of “violent insurrection” and character- the protests had passed, he was shocked by the strained atmosphere izing Juviler and Dalton as “incurable racists.” The goal was to and confessed to Juviler that he was anxious about which side of expose the students to as many opinions as possible, and the the conflict to take. Juviler listened calmly (he had the tendency to Panthers’ presentation (they read Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, close his eyes during such moments), smiled, and said, “Dennis, followed by a lengthy conversation with the students) was soon just be yourself.” contrasted by an appearance from David Dellinger, a pacifist and The two quickly became close friends, and Juviler, feeling that leader of the antiwar movement. No matter how heated the class- Dalton’s interests in nonviolence and civil rights aligned naturally room became (one time a student got so angry he jumped up and with his own, invited him to co-teach Modern Political Movements. started chasing a speaker around the room), Juviler was “a model They would each give five lectures, Dalton’s Ghandi-centric and of civility,” says Dalton. “Again and again we advocated Justice Juviler’s delivered through the prism of his Soviet expertise. After Holmes’s classic judgment that we must defend ‘freedom for the months spent perfecting the syllabus (trading a stack of annotated, thought that we hate.’” typewritten onion skin pages over snail mail throughout their summer Teaching became the main solace to Juviler’s despair about travels), they wondered if anyone would even show up. When they domestic politics. “More than ever I feel that the hope for our walked into the classroom, it was so crowded they had trouble beleaguered country lies with the youth who went through the last making their way to the podium. few years with eyes opened in ways never before . . . and a new Juviler was already an extremely popular professor, but Dalton determination to make a difference as a group,” he wrote to a had never lectured a class close to that size (there were more than friend in January of 1970. “Teaching, so often a frustrating expe- 250 students). Trying to calm his nerves, Dalton asked Juviler how rience in the short run of chaos and trouble for the schools, gains he was feeling. new meaning in longer perspective. Although we all have been

14 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

BOOKS landed on time and again for those terrible things we teach the Freedom’s Ordeal: The Struggle for Human poor innocent students, I am really proud of the sort of people our Rights and Democracy in Post-Soviet States graduates turn out to be.” And he went to the ends of the earth for (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania anyone who came through his classroom (once, after slipping on Press, 1997) ice on his way to class, he taught a lecture, unflinching, then went to the doctor to discover that he had taught with a broken leg). Human Rights for the 21st Century: Foundations “He didn’t just have two children; he got tremendous satisfaction for Responsible Hope: A U.S. Post-Soviet from nurturing his students through the four years of Barnard,” Dialogue, edited with Bertram Gross (New York: says Juviler’s son Geoffry, who remembers his father receiving calls M. E. Sharpe, 1993) from his pupils at all hours. Gorbachev’s Reforms: U.S. and Japanese The year 1975 opened a new chapter in Juviler’s career. Thirty- Assessment, edited with Hiroshi Kimura (New five nations signed the Helsinki Accords, a compromise geared to York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988) improve relations between the West and the Communist bloc: the West would respect the East’s borders, and the East would adhere Revolutionary Law and Order: Politics and to the fundamental values of human rights. This led to the creation Social Change in the USSR (New York: Free of human rights groups, such as Helsinki Watch (eventually Press, 1976) Human Rights Watch), throughout the world and most importantly, within the borders of the USSR. The period was both fascinating Soviet Policy-Making: Studies of Communism and uplifting for Juviler, who, as his former student and colleague in Transition, edited with Henry Morton (New Flora Davidson puts it, “was involved in human rights before it York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967) was even called human rights.” He began to research the field in a broader sense, expanding his focus to other parts of the world, such as South and Central America and the Middle East. Meanwhile, a Peter Juviler Fund community of human rights scholars was emerging on the Barnard and Columbia campuses, and Juviler immersed himself in it. In In memory of Peter Juviler, who touched the the late 1970s, he became involved with the budding University lives of thousands of students and colleagues Seminar for Human Rights—a discussion-based interdisciplinary and who dedicated himself to the promotion seminar series—which he would eventually cochair. He also helped of religious tolerance, responsible citizenship, shape the development of the Center for Human Rights (now the and human dignity, Barnard has launched an Institute for the Study of Human Rights) at Columbia, serving as initiative to endow a fund in support of the study both a member of its Executive Committee and as codirector. In and practice in the field of human rights. The 1988, he became the first U.S. scholar to lecture on human rights Juviler Fund will ensure that new generations in the USSR at the Institute of State and Law, the USSR Academy of Barnard Human Rights majors will continue of Sciences, and the Moscow University Faculty of Law. And, in in Juviler’s footsteps, as they address ethical the year 2000, when he was seventy-four years old, he managed, and practical issues in our increasingly despite significant opposition, to create the first undergraduate interconnected world. program for the study of human rights in the United States, at Barnard College. The Juviler Fund will support awards for travel In his quiet and gentle manner, Juviler channeled his unrelenting and research, and strengthen the promotion of passion for human rights to the next generation of human rights the major. Over time, Barnard hopes to expand practitioners. “People need to use human rights to empower lives,” the Fund to include additional aspects, including he once told his colleague, George Andreopolous, after being faculty support, fellowships, internships, and delayed to a meeting because of a student, “and there is no limit to financial aid assistance for Human Rights the time it takes to teach them.” Barnard graduate Paula Franzese majors. The initial goal is to raise $100,000 to will never forget Juviler’s office hours, which were supposed to take endow the Fund, which will ensure that Juviler’s place on Tuesdays from 2 to 4 p.m. A line would extend down work and legacy are memorialized in perpetuity. the fourth floor hallway at Lehman Hall. Students would wait for hours, sometimes until as late as eight o’clock. When they arrived To make a gift, please visit www.barnard.edu at his door wondering if, perhaps, they should reschedule, Juviler /gift and enter “Juviler Fund” in the “Restricted would smile and say, “I’m so happy to see you.” □ Funds” box. For more information, call 212-870- 2569 or write Robin Roy at [email protected].

harriman magazine ­­ | 15 ­­ Caricature of General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev by Edmund S. Valtman, 1968.

RUSSIA

in the Late Years of Soviet Rule

16 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PERSPECTIVEs

By Thomas Kent Why Did Citizens Comply with a Failing Regime?

Thomas Kent, adjunct associate professor of journalism and of international and public affairs, was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Moscow from 1976 to 1978 and from 1979 to 1981. In this piece, adapted from presentations at the Harriman Institute and Columbia College, he answers an often-asked question: Why did Russians put up with the privations of life in the late years of Soviet rule?

o many Westerners, the last Russians be anything but compliant? The decades of the Soviet Union are a KGB under Yuri Andropov was a reality. puzzle. How did a regime with so However, by the time the Brezhnev regime T many failings survive? Most Russians reached its height, or its nadir, people hardly were well aware that people lived far better lived in a state of constant terror. Some in the West, that the dream of perfect people were given significant jail sentences communism, or even perfect socialism, on charges like anti-Soviet propaganda, wasn’t going to come true, and that Leonid but not many; most dissidents who dared Brezhnev’s leadership was ineffectual and to hold public demonstrations against the sclerotic. In contrast to the revolutionary government were jailed for as little as ten fervor of the 1920s, the racing industri- or fifteen days. People no longer faced alization of the 1930s, or the sacrifice imprisonment for slacking on the job. and victory of the war years, Russia, from Significant numbers listened regularly to Brezhnev’s ascent in the mid-1960s until Western radio broadcasts with impunity. the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev, was The KGB was there, but it was not a RUSSIA mainly in the business of getting by. It was national preoccupation: as Russians liked President Gerald R. Ford and General a grim time of privation and ineptitude to say when asked about it, “I don’t think Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev after with little prospect of reward. But despite about Andropov, and I certainly hope he signing the Joint Communiqué on shortages of food, housing, and health care, doesn’t think about me.” the Limitation of Strategic Offensive there was never any significant threat to his History suggests that in any authoritar- Arms, Vladivostok, November 1974 rule. While Brezhnev’s elderly and decrepit ian regime, the leadership stays in power Politburo was the regular butt of jokes, it through more than brute intimidation. reigned over a docile nation. Devices commonly include appeals to Russians, we know from the 1990s and nationalist or religious sentiment, techniques since, are capable of expressing discontent. of social organization, and a common fear So why was opposition to the regime so of external enemies. Combined with just little in evidence despite the best efforts of a shadow of repression, these factors can the country’s own dissidents to agitate for create a society where people not only serve democracy and the best subversion that the state conscientiously but feel they’re Western propaganda could muster? Why doing the right thing. were there so many people who not only So, too, in the Soviet Union. Many didn’t oppose the government but actually people were cynical of the regime to a supported it, or at least got out of bed and degree—“They pretend to pay us, and we went to work each day more or less plan- pretend to work.” But the prevailing mood ning to do a good job, rarely challenging was hardly one of terror and resentment. the regime that ran things? There was much more to the Soviet people’s To that question, most Westerners give mindset than that. So how was society the same answer. They lay the quiescence organized in the Brezhnev period? What of Russians to the massive intelligence and factors kept people in line and even earned security apparatus that had institutional- their support? Certainly it would be a ized terror since 1917. Given informers, mistake to entirely discount the intelligence phone taps, labor camps, how could and police apparatus. In a million little

harriman magazine ­­ | 17 ­­ There were thousands and thousands of people with some To begin with, the regime traded on Russians’ patriotism and their indisputable connection to authority. If you liked telling people what to love for their country. This included a general do (and plenty of people did), you, too, could be one of the acceptance of the right of Communists to lead it. Despite the cynicism of some, nation’s enforcers, even in your spare time. the idealism of the Communist revolution never quite faded in the Brezhnev period, in spite of all the promises that had failed to work out. However bad life was, Soviet ways, Russians knew the authorities were In an exquisite arrangement, real security citizens felt they were all in it together. always there. A colleague of mine remem- agents sometimes appeared at public events Most of them lived in the same difficult bers going to a riverbank one January 1 sporting the armbands of the humble situation—there was equality in their depri- to watch Muscovites jump into the icy druzhinniki or other volunteer groups. This vation. There were no Russian capitalists Moscow River in the annual show of muddied the waters just perfectly. Anybody profiting at their expense. (Whatever luxuries toughness and spirit. Some kind of argu- with an armband, anybody on a committee, government officials enjoyed they hid well ment started between a couple of people anybody who looked like they could be on behind high dacha walls and their cars’ on the bank. A man in plain clothes a committee conceivably could be someone tinted glass. Conspicuous consumption, stepped out of the crowd. He told them to highly dangerous if crossed. For people the downfall of elites in many countries, quiet down. They did. No badge flashed, who might get out of line, this arrange- was not a practice in the Soviet Union.) no explanation of who he was . . . but ment created the impression that the forces Youth groups sometimes engaged in everyone knew as much as they needed to. of order were pervasive. And, most import- projects like the kommunisticheskii trudovoy If he wasn’t a genuine KGB agent, his very ant, all those who drew even the smallest semestr, a semester or summer they’d spend stride, his controlled voice, and even his bit of power from being a druzhinnik or without pay on projects like building summer stare alone indicated he was someone— committee member had a personal stake in camps for children. There was a selflessness someone associated with the police, preserving the existing system. to this work (though it might help them someone in the party, someone from a local Beyond police power lay the heavy hand advance in the Communist Youth League), committee with authority. All that was of administrative control. The language of and they felt few other countries had young important was that he represented some the time was rich with terms—propuski, people doing those sorts of things. Russians larger apparatus that could make things propiski, spravki, trudovye knizhki, pasporta, laughed at Brezhnev, but they rarely joked difficult for the protagonists. and udostovereniya—each referring to one about Lenin. Many were convinced that There were thousands and thousands of of the little documents that ruled where despite all the unpleasant realities of the people with some connection to authority. you could work, where you could live, and USSR, the principles Lenin espoused were If you liked telling others what to do (and where you could travel. All of them took still valid, still embodied their national pur- plenty of people did), you, too, could be the blessing of the bureaucracy to get; pose, and still legitimized the Soviet state. one of the nation’s enforcers, even in your offend a comrades’ court today, have trouble Beyond maintaining equality among most spare time. You could join the druzhinniki, getting a critical document stamped citizens, Soviet authorities won widespread the volunteer auxiliary police. In return, tomorrow. Yet those of us in the Soviet support by lavishing attention on children. you got an armband, a little stick you Union during the Brezhnev period felt that (When Westerners asserted that the Soviet could hold up to stop traffic—pretty much repression, be it police or bureaucratic, was leadership was living a life of luxury, Soviet whenever you felt like it—and plenty hardly the key to the obedience and loyalty officials delighted in the gotcha response, of connections with the real police for the Soviet people offered the regime. “Yes, we do have a privileged class—our whatever they might be worth. You could join “comrades’ courts,” panels of amateur judges with the right to impose fines on neighbors for infractions like disorderly conduct. A whole additional assortment of committees based on apartment build- ings, neighborhoods, trade unions, and For a country with pervasive censorship, the Soviet Union party cells felt free to inquire into pretty claimed to publish more newspapers, journals, and books much anyone’s conduct, morality, and personal life. than any other nation in the world.

18 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PERSPECTIVEs

children!”) To the extent that a basically poor country could afford it, children were well cared for and had the best of whatever medical care was available. They benefited from an extensive network of sports clubs, summer camps, and cultural activities ranging from ballet to circus. In fact, the government devoted large expenditures to intellectual, cultural, and sports activities for everyone. For a country with pervasive censorship, it claimed to publish more newspapers, journals, and books than any other nation in the world . . . many of questionable value, but all at low prices and, from a statistical standpoint, a lot of kultura per capita. The regime also espoused the dignity of work, any work. A well-performing trolleybus driver or farmer could expect bonuses, hagiography on his enterprise’s bulletin board, a free trip to a resort or spa, and maybe even a medal of the same level that political leaders wore. Perception of a real Western military threat also bound Russians together, and to the Brezhnev regime. The United States and the rest of NATO looked threatening to ordinary Soviets. If Americans favored Mercator map projections that made Russia look like a colossus stretching across half the globe, Russia favored polar pro- jections that showed their country ringed by U.S. bases and client states. The Soviet press regularly asserted that the United States spared no expense for weaponry. The implication was that if not for Russia’s need to keep up, the nation’s standard of living might be higher. When Americans in senior positions regularly denounced and threatened the Soviet Union, their words essentially confirmed for ordinary Russians

Right: Ford and Brezhnev, Vladivostok, November 1974

harriman magazine ­­ | 19 ­­ A military parade in Red Square marks the sixty-first anniversary of the October Revolution (November 7, 1978). (Bettman/Corbis/AP Images)

what their own government was saying by the United States and liberation figures, a near monopoly on offering some of the about U.S. intentions. including Nelson Mandela, championed most exciting things a young Russian could Such sentiment peaked after Ronald by Moscow. All this managed to convince do. An automobile might be unaffordable Reagan’s casual quip in August 1984 about many citizens that their country was to a Russian teenager, but if he joined bombing the Soviet Union. The president indeed the world’s principal force for DOSAAF—the Voluntary Society for was testing a microphone before a radio peace and progress (there was a Soviet Cooperation with the Army, Air Force, and address and said, just to test the sound propaganda radio station by that specific Navy—he could find himself driving a car, level, “I’m pleased to tell you today that name), while the United States was the a truck, or a tank on the DOSAAF practice I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw most likely source of war and oppression. grounds. Same if he wanted to drive a power Russia forever. We begin bombing in Soviet propaganda skillfully portrayed boat or fly a plane. While any American five minutes.” Most Americans took it as the nation’s dissidents—poorly organized teenager might drive a car or wire up an a there-he-goes-again Reagan moment. individuals known to most citizens only amateur radio transmitter on his own, such Russians were horrified. For them, it was through Western broadcasts—as a fifth things were often available in Russia only evidence not only that bombing Russia column inspired by the West. All this was through DOSAAF or groups like it—and was always on Reagan’s mind but that the reinforced by a huge emphasis on Russia’s discussion of the Western threat was always United States—untouched in World War II suffering in World War II. The Soviet state part of the curriculum. Not for nothing while Russia was nearly destroyed—could drew a straight line from the war to the was it called “military-political training.” treat war as comic material. Brezhnev era, encouraging veterans to wear The West was also regularly portrayed as Soviet propagandists juxtaposed this their medals, creating occasions for them a bastion of social injustice, pornography, bellicose image of the West with Russia’s to tell children about their exploits, and and labor unrest, held together only by foreign policy. Russians were well aware of jumping them to the head of the line at bribery and repression. Often under head- Moscow’s support for a variety of Asian, stores and cinemas. lines like Vot ikh demokratiya—“Such African, and Latin American causes, usually Given the concept of the Soviet Union is their democracy”—Soviet reporters portrayed as national liberation movements as a peace-loving state that must always would visit American homeless shelters or being opposed by the United States and be prepared for war, it was eminently interview bitter, jobless American workers. other Western interests. Key among them reasonable to Russians that high schools Strikes large and small, anywhere in the was the struggle against apartheid, with should train children in handling auto- Western world, would be reported in South Africa’s white government backed matic weapons. The military also enjoyed adjoining articles in Russian newspapers,

20 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PERSPECTIVEs

The West was regularly portrayed as a bastion of social mechanic might get tickets to a first-run movie at his factory club, which he could injustice, pornography, and labor unrest, held together slip to the butcher for hard-to-get sausage. only by bribery and repression. The woman at the shoe store might look out for a certain size for the doctor, who would give her family priority for an appointment. The official who controlled implying they were all part of a common endemic nationwide. Lacking the Internet the waiting list for apartments might give wave of resistance against capitalist bosses. or an unfettered press, there was little way extra consideration to an Aeroflot flight Soviet propaganda gave Russians plenty of for citizens to know whether the privations attendant who brought her a scarf from reason to doubt that everything in Western or corruption they experienced were sys- Paris. Everyone, it seemed, knew a guy countries was as good as they might have tematic or just anecdotal to their region. who could get something done in return heard. It worked. Often Russians, asked Citizens who became particularly fond for a small favor. This democratization of if they knew about Western freedom of of improving processes and exposing access and connections bound millions speech and press, would respond, “Yes. misdeeds often benefited from a faux of people into a system where they had That means anyone can publish pornogra- politics that gave them some genuine power as much to lose as to gain if the system phy, right?” while demonstrating the advantages of were threatened. A stream of foreign visitors, including coloring within the lines. Not only did the All these factors went into the social many Americans, unwittingly helped validate system of low-level neighborhood, trade and political algorithm that let Brezhnev what Soviet propaganda was saying. union, and Communist Party bodies have survive. Russians of the period were nation- A program on Soviet TV consisted of inter- authority over minor issues like housing alistic, sometimes idealistic people, who views with visiting foreigners who would and factory work rules, it also elevated worked hard enough for the regime so that politely enthuse about the Moscow subways, smart and prudent members to city, regional, it didn’t fall apart completely. They realized the Bolshoi Theater, or anything else they or even higher-level soviets, or legislative things were far from perfect. But, like most could think of to praise. Sometimes their bodies. The Supreme Soviet in Moscow, people, they saw more good in their own eagerness to please extended to noting that the nation’s highest lawmaking council, country than ill. And they lived in a system everyone in Russia had a job when the and national congresses of the Communist that had finely honed control and reward, United States had so many unemployed, Party were rife with milkmaids, construc- propaganda, and patriotism for the preser- and that in Russia, health care was free. tion workers, and hundreds of others vation of the Soviet state. □ But what about assertive Russians who with minimal political training. Top party might genuinely be tempted by the idea of authorities made the real decisions. At the Tom Kent is standards editor and a deputy Russia’s people making their own decisions same time, the higher the soviet, the greater managing editor of The Associated Press. about their daily life? Those who got the personal privileges of membership, Based in New York, he lectures interna- interested in the idea on too grand a scale and the more lavish the annual meetings. tionally on journalistic ethics, including at could be dealt with by the KGB. But at a One might call this true bread-and-butter Russian universities and media conferences. more ordinary level, the system was hugely politics . . . not because the soviets had He served with the AP as correspondent in successful in co-opting those Russians who authority over bread-and-butter issues, but Sydney, Australia; correspondent for NATO identified inefficiencies, petty corruption, because of the butter, salmon, and caviar and the European Union in Brussels; corre- and silly rules that trammeled daily life and canapés that the members enjoyed during spondent and bureau chief in Moscow; chief sapped the economy. The Soviet press had breaks in the sessions. The lesson was obvi- of AP operations in Iran during the Iranian a controlled level of investigative reporting. ous as individuals who had some authority revolution; deputy news editor and news Poor-quality goods and pointless rules at a local level rose in the soviets: Accepting editor of AP’s World Service Division in New were exposed for all to see, with due credit that you had no real power over larger York; and international editor of the AP. to those who had reported them. Arrests and larger issues brought larger and larger He graduated from Yale with a specialty in of low-level officials for corruption were benefits. The effect was to retain within international relations and Russian. publicized widely. the system some who might otherwise have To be sure, such exposés usually appeared become larger-scale voices of protest. only in regional newspapers. If reported Even if you weren’t in a soviet, the road nationally, they focused on failings in indi- to special privileges was still open to almost vidual towns. There was never a suggestion every Soviet citizen. Only the elite got that mismanagement and corruption were luxury goods from the West. But a factory

harriman magazine ­­ | 21 ­­ Bosnian Spring Signals New Possibilities for Bosnia-Herzegovina

22 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

n early February 2014, news of revolution in Ukraine and for Peace, better known as the Dayton Agreement, in December Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) dominated international headlines. 1995. The agreement separated the country into two entities, the As Euromaidan gave way to the Russian occupation of Crimea, Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and I however, scenes of armed militias in Sevastopol pushed the the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS), creating a complex “Bosnian Spring” from the front pages. In Ukraine, the revolution patchwork of institutions that employ approximately 180 min- brought the country to the brink of war. In BiH, still recovering isters, 600 legislators, and 70,000 bureaucrats according to strict from the Bosnian War (1992–95), the protests created the first real ethnic quotas. These elected officials and their staff constitute a possibility for change in nearly two decades. privileged class that has facilitated the highest rate of corruption At the heart of this possibility is the emergence of grassroots on the European continent. Until now, these elites have skillfully popular assemblies, locally known as the plenumi. Attended first manipulated the population by using Serb, Croat, and Bosniak by hundreds, then by thousands, the plena have created a space nationalist rhetoric to maintain postwar ethnic tensions and thus for the citizens of BiH to discuss openly and freely the one shared prevent united popular backlash against their rule. reality that cuts across all complex ethnic, regional, and political But, on February 4, 2014, a crowd of several hundred unem- divisions: the country’s catastrophic socioeconomic situation. More ployed workers from the collapsed Dita, Polihem, Guming, and than 40 percent of the adult population, 50 percent of women, and Konjuh factories gathered in front of the seat of the Tuzla Canton. 60 percent of young people are unemployed. Among the youth, Chanting “Thieves!” they demanded the government investigate 80 percent declare they would leave BiH if they had the means. the privatizations of their former employers, the industrial giants Meanwhile, Bosnian lawmakers make six times the average wage in where the majority of the population worked during the socialist the country, the highest such gap in Europe. era. By February 6, approximately 6,000 people gathered in the This situation is the result of the byzantine mass of govern- streets of Tuzla. Officials refused to meet with worker represen- ing bodies established by the General Framework Agreement tatives, who were confronted by an increasingly hostile police presence. Running street battles ensued in which a hundred police were injured and eleven cars set ablaze. The public anger in Tuzla touched a nerve across the country. The next day the protests spread to more than twenty cities and towns, including the major centers of Sarajevo, Zenica, Mostar, and Locations where the protests took place Bihać. In Sarajevo, protestors torched cantonal offices, municipal (map readapted from Klix.ba) buildings, and the seat of the presidency of BiH. In Mostar, the jewel of Herzegovina, crowds set fire to government buildings and the local party headquarters of the leading nationalist parties. In Tuzla itself, more than a hundred people were injured as angry crowds stormed and later set fire to several floors of the cantonal government building. For BiH, everything about the protests was unprecedented: their size, their militancy, and, above all, their effectiveness. In their wake, the premiers of four cantons in the Federation entity resigned, as did the director of the Directorate for Police Coordination, a state-level body. In the RS, a panicked scramble by the authorities resulted in an offer for snap elections, as well as a campaign of intimidation against local activists. Clearly terrified at what appeared to be a rejection by the BiH citizens of the political establishment as a whole, all three nationalist camps began to blame sinister foreign “centers of power” for the unrest. Moreover, representatives of the leading nationalist parties explained that the socioeconomic complaints of the protestors were only a mask for their true anti-Bosniak, anti-Croat, and anti-Serb agendas. The ethnic narrative was predictable. But, only days after the worst of the violence, a Valicon poll released on February 12 illustrated how detached this “ethnic spin” was from the public’s perceptions: 88 percent of respondents in BiH supported the pro- tests, 93 percent in the FBiH, and 78 percent in the RS. Despite

harriman magazine ­­ | 23 ­­ Zenica-Doboj Canton building the day after the riot in February 2014

the popular support, the spontaneous emergence of the citizen the electoral process. After the 2010 General Elections, however, it plena has been an unlikely development in a society where few took sixteen months for a governing coalition to be formed at the institutions, schools and public utility companies included, are state level—one that collapsed quickly thereafter. Since then par- not ethnically segregated and mutual suspicion is meant to inform liamentary sessions have frequently dissolved into farcical theatrics; virtually every aspect of daily life. it is still not entirely clear which is the ruling coalition and which The plena have demanded the resignations of entity and cantonal the opposition. Given the impasse, new elections should have been governments, audits of public spending, investigations of failed called years ago. A provision for such elections, however, does not privatizations, and the creation of nonpartisan, expert governments exist in BiH. appointed to be in dialogue with the plena themselves in the period Thus, the plena are actually a deepening of the possibilities leading up to the October General Elections. In Tuzla, Sarajevo, entailed by democratic politics. The aim of the plena is to establish and Una-Sana cantons, the local authorities have largely acquiesced permanent dialogue between elected officials and ordinary citizens, to popular demands by passing legislation that will cut years-long and as such they represent an accountability and transparency “severance pay” for officials no longer even employed by the govern- mechanism, moreover, one devised by the people of BiH themselves. ment, for instance. However, authorities in both the FBiH and RS The logic is one born of nearly twenty years of disappointment: governments remain aggressively obstinate, refusing to meet or even change comes through meaningful, citizen-led democratization not acknowledge the citizens’ demands. the periodic rearranging of hitherto unassailable and entrenched What does this eruption of democratic consciousness tell us about political elites. BiH? The implications are paradigmatic. To begin with, there is While the plena offer the potential for a democratic transformation clearly widespread national disillusionment with the existing in BiH, substantive and lasting change will require a multipronged political process. Second, Bosnians and Herzegovinians are able approach by both local and international actors. On the local level, and willing to organize across ethnic lines, especially on concrete a truly autonomous and organized civil society that is willing and socioeconomic concerns that the political establishment refuses to able to hold accountable the political establishment is still only address. And, perhaps most importantly, the citizens have shown emerging. Ultimately, civil society initiatives will depend on the themselves to be able to produce and articulate clear demands and appearance of new, genuinely democratic and progressive parties policy suggestions regarding how to further this process. and leaders within the context of established political institutions. Cynical local (and partisan) commentators have suggested that Without such parties acting to turn popular will into effective law, the meetings constitute an attempted coup d’état or an attack on the country risks sliding into a permanent conflict between elites

24 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

Government building of Tuzla Canton burning

and masses, one where street violence could become a frequent and The international community has long been waiting for the dangerous occurrence. people of BiH to come up with a popular initiative like the plena. The Office of the High Representative (OHR) still has the Now, the citizens of BiH need international assistance to make authority to sanction, penalize, and remove corrupt and obstruc- their hard-won victories permanent by pushing through critical and tionist officials according to the Bonn Powers granted to that office urgently required reforms. Failure to accomplish these goals may in 1997. Rarely used since 2006, despite being the most volatile irreversibly destabilize the heart of southeastern Europe for decades postwar period to date, the Bonn Powers must once again become to come. □ a tool in the OHR arsenal. Indeed, given the disastrous situation in the country since 2010, in particular, it is time for a new High Jasmin Mujanović is a Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute and Representative—a fresh, newly empowered agent to assist in BiH’s a Ph.D. candidate in political science at York University. Tanya L. long-obstructed democratization process. All these steps require Domi is assistant adjunct professor of international and public affairs a concerted reengagement on the part of the U.S. and EU. The at the Harriman Institute and a Fellow at the Emerging Democracies inevitability of constitutional reform must be made clear if BiH is Institute based in Washington, D.C. ever to be a serious candidate for EU and NATO membership. The country requires a rational and democratic constitutional order, one rooted in established human rights norms and practices. Robust minority rights and protections must replace ethnic quotas.

On the local level, a truly autonomous and organized civil society that is willing and able to hold accountable the political establishment is still only emerging. Ultimately, civil society initiatives will depend on the appearance of new, genuinely democratic and progressive parties and leaders within the context of established political institutions.

harriman magazine ­­ | 25 ­­ Pro-European Union crowds converge in Independence Square, Kyiv, Ukraine (Sunday, December 22, 2013). (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Ukraine’s Third By Mykola Attempt Riabchuk

26 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

or many Westerners, especially those increasingly skeptical the feckless Orange government. Within a few years, the narrow of the European Union (EU), the mere fact that thousands circle of the president’s allies, nicknamed “the Family,” usurped all of young Ukrainians went to the streets in the frosty winter power, destroyed the court system, amassed enormous resources via F of 2013 to defend an agreement with the EU that did not corruption schemes, and encroached heavily on human rights and promise any immediate gains may look strange. Timothy Snyder, in civil liberties. his New York Review of Books blog, asks: “Would anyone anywhere The dire results of their rule became evident not only in eco- in the world be willing to take a truncheon in the head for the sake nomic stagnation and the virtual collapse of the financial system of a trade agreement with the United States?” Certainly not. And under the burden of international and domestic debt, but also in Snyder of course knew the answer to his rhetorical question: it was Ukraine’s dramatic downgrading in various international indices— not the agreement per se that mobilized the protesters but rather from the rank of 89 in 2009 to 126 in 2013 on the Press Freedom their hope for a “normal life in a normal country,” which the agree- Index; from 107 to 144 on the Corruption Perception Index; ment had symbolized. “If this is a revolution,” he wrote, “it must from 142 to 152 on the Doing Business Index; and from a “free” be one of the most common-sense revolutions in history.” to a “partly free” country in the ranking by Freedom House. But In November, after the government absconded with people’s probably the most damaging consequence of their misrule became hopes for a “normal life,” Ukrainians felt deceived not merely about the public’s complete distrust in all state institutions, particularly this single case but also about their entire lives, about the country’s those that ensure legality and law enforcement. By the end of 2013, development that had been stuck for twenty-two years in a gray only 2 percent of respondents fully trusted the Ukrainian courts zone between post-Soviet autocracies to the east and increasingly (40 percent declared no trust at all), 3 percent trusted the police, democratizing and prosperous neighbors to the west. the prosecutor’s office, and parliament (controlled by Yanukovych’s There had been too many hopes and too many disappoint- supporters), and 5 percent trusted the government. The only ments over the past twenty-two years, beginning with national institutions with a positive balance in the trust/distrust equation independence endorsed by 90 percent of the citizens in 1991 but appeared to be the church, mass media, and NGOs. eventually compromised by the predatory elite, and ending perhaps Indeed, as Michael Zantovsky argued in World Affairs last with the 2004 Orange Revolution that also failed to deliver on its November, it might be a blessing in disguise that the Ukrainian By Mykola high promises. Things only went from bad to worse with the 2010 government shelved the agreement and that a country with this Attempt Riabchuk election of Viktor Yanukovych as president and the dismissal of sort of ruling elite was not brought into Europe. But the problem

harriman magazine ­­ | 27 ­­ is that people in the government and their Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the Halchynsky praises Maidan’s non- oligarchic cronies have already long been agreement represented a moment of truth, mercantile character, which, in his view, in Europe—with their villas, stolen money, and the mass protests in Kyiv and other cities is fully in line with global trends moving and diplomatic passports that make a were simply a reaction to that truth—a from economic determinism to moral and visa-free regime for the rest of their fellow farewell to illusions and the recognition of spiritual values. Importantly, he contends, citizens unnecessary. Ironically, they have reality. Maidan meant, in fact, the confron- it is not a Bolshevik-style revolution of fully benefited from the rule of law and tation of two different worlds, two political the lumpenproletariat. On the contrary, it property rights in the West, while systemi- systems and sets of values—so-called is being carried out primarily by educated cally undermining these very rights in their “Europe” embodied in the EU and so-called people, the middle class, students, profes- own country. It was not they who were “Eurasia” embodied in Putinist Russia, sionals, and businessmen (according to the excluded from Europe, but Ukraine and its Yanukovych’s “Family,” and the hired thugs Democratic Initiative Fund’s sociological 46 million people, whereas the ruling elite that harassed protesters. surveys, nearly two-thirds of Maidan continues to enjoy la dolce vita in what Maidan, indeed, was neither a “nationalis- protesters have a higher education). Maidan they domestically call “Euro-Sodom”— tic mutiny” nor an “election technology” resembles, in a number of ways, the 1968 a Putinesque-style nickname for the applied by the opposition, as Viktor democratic revolutions that spread across European Union. Yanukovych and his Kremlin patrons Europe and the globe, introducing a radi- For many Ukrainians, the association claimed. Rather, it was a classical social cally new, nonmaterialist agenda. agreement was the last hope for fixing revolution, an attempt to complete the If these observations are correct and a grad- things peacefully, that is, to make their unfinished business of the 1989 East ual shift from materialist to post-materialist rulers abide by the law and to get the EU’s European antiauthoritarian and anticolo- values is taking place in Ukraine, any attempt support in an attempt to reestablish the nial uprisings. As Anatoly Halchynsky, a to install a full-fledged authoritarian regime rule of law in the country. Most of them renowned Ukrainian economist, argued in Ukraine is doomed from the start. To the had little if any illusion about the ruling in Dzerkalo tyzhnia (January 17, 2014), extent that Ukrainian society is becoming clique, and the last thing they wanted was “the goals of 1991, of Maidan-2004, and a “knowledge society,” and new generations to see them in Europe. But for many the of Euro-Maidan are the same. They are grow up taking survival for granted, an agreement had two clear meanings. On the of the same origin, related not only to the increase in demands for participation in government side, it meant a commitment assertion of Ukraine’s national sovereignty decision making in the economic and not to steal, lie, and cheat so much and so but also to putting an end to the Soviet political life is inevitable. unscrupulously. Whereas on the EU side, it era and freeing Ukraine’s mentality from One may refer here to the analysis by merely meant helping Ukrainian citizens, the remnants of totalitarianism. European Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel of whenever possible, to enforce this commit- integration is merely an indicator of the cultural links between modernization ment not to steal, lie, and cheat. these changes.” and democracy and, in particular, their two-dimensional map of cross-cultural variations that reflects correlations of a large number of basic values drawn from National Ukrainian Survey 20131 the extensive data of the World Value Education Ethnicity Age Surveys. (Ukraine was the object of these surveys in 1995, 2000, and 2006.)2 Basic Higher Russian Ukrainian 60+ 18–29 The WVS Cultural Map positions each Does Ukraine need country according to its citizens’ values. more democracy or a 9/75 32/55 14/66 28/58 19/67 32/52 One dimension reflects the predominance “strong hand”? (%) of Secular-Rational values versus Traditional Does Ukraine need values; another represents the shift by more freedom of speech 31/27 47/25 21/40 47/24 36/31 49/22 different countries from Survival values to or more censorship? (%) Self-Expression. The former shift coincides Should Ukraine develop primarily with the process of modern- market relations or return 23/46 58/25 32/44 54/28 35/43 61/19 ization and industrialization; the latter is to a planned economy? (%) typical primarily for postindustrial devel- Do you regret the loss opment. This is reflected also, as Welzel of the Soviet Union? 62/20 31/57 55/31 38/47 61/27 20/60 and Inglehart posit in a June 2010 article (yes/no) for Perspectives on Politics, in a substantial

28 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

difference in both dimensions between Fundamental issues like less-educated and university-educated members of the same society. human rights, civil Yaroslav Hrytsak, a prominent Ukrainian liberties, and rule of law historian, argues in Zbruc (December 26, 2013) that Ukraine does not support Welzel cannot be solved by a and Inglehart’s pessimistic conclusion that simple majority vote. the peculiar set of values entrenched in the mentality of the post-Soviet people renders all these countries very unlikely to achieve differences and cross-group similarities a trajectory of sustainable development nearly as important as inter-group differ- in the foreseeable future. He refers to the ences and dissimilarities. For example, as noticeable shift in values in the Survival/ we see from the data above, ethnic Russians Self-Expression dimension that occurred in are much more prone to regret the loss of Ukraine in the past decade—in sharp con- the Soviet Union than ethnic Ukrainians. trast to the virtual stagnation of the 1990s. But this represents merely a statistically Indeed, even though the most recent significant correlation and not ironclad WVS figures date from 2006, the latest dependence and determinism. Whereas Ukrainian surveys confirm that the 47 percent of Ukrainians express no regret country’s shift in values, however slow for the Soviet Union, 38 percent express and at times incoherent, is persistent and it to various degrees; whereas 55 percent probably irreversible. First of all, it is most of Russians (in Ukraine) regret the loss noticeable in the attitudes of different age of the Soviet Union, 31 percent do not. groups to various value-charged issues. Both groups are as divided internally as Last year’s national survey reveals a strong they are externally among themselves. Photo by Vitalii Liamichev correlation between the respondent’s age The same intra-group divisions can be dis- and attitude toward some fundamental cerned in people’s attitudes toward other issue, such as “democracy vs. ‘strong political options. hand,’” “freedom of speech vs. censorship,” Ethnic Russians and/or Russian speakers “planned economy vs. free market,” and, are more likely to support a “strong hand” the most general, “regret/no regret for the vs. democracy, censorship vs. freedom Soviet Union.” But one may also discern of speech, or planned economy vs. free a significant correlation between all those market. But this is only likelihood, not issues and people’s ethnicity as well as determinism. The reason is simple: it was education (In the table to the left only “yes/ much easier for Russians and Russophones no” answers are shown, whereas “difficult to internalize Soviet ideology as “ours” than to say/no answer” is omitted. In addition, for Ukrainophones, who strove to preserve only the youngest and oldest age groups their cultural identity under the pressure are shown. The middle groups are omitted of Russification and therefore had more and the middle group of Russophone reason to distance themselves, to various Ukrainians—those that fall between ethnic degrees, from Soviet officialdom. Ukrainians and Russians, and all the Many other important differences cross middle groups between those with higher regional, ethnic, or ethnocultural divides. and basic education). Higher education is one crucial factor: in This clearly demonstrates that Ukraine all groups and regions it strongly cor- is divided, but certainly not split. The con- relates with a pro-Western, pro-democratic spicuous differences between the proverbial orientation and increased civic behavior. West and East are mitigated by (a) the vast The same correlation also holds with age: intermediate regions of Central Ukraine and the younger the respondent the more likely (b) the heterogeneity of any sociologically she or he is to support Ukraine’s European significant group that makes intra-group integration and everything it entails.

harriman magazine ­­ | 29 ­­ Nicu Popescu, a senior analyst at the EU two overlapping nations—the Soviet and has tried to balance the two sides, roughly Institute for Security Studies in Paris, aptly anti-Soviet, Eurasian and European, the comparable to the way pre–Civil War U.S. recognized the complexity of Ukrainian nation of paternalistic subjects and of presidents tried to keep America’s house divides when he contended at the very emancipated citizens—bear the same name together by waffling on slavery… Time beginning of the Maidan uprising that “the but are fundamentally divided by the very will tell if President Yanukovych can keep fault line runs not just between east and idea of what Ukraine is and should be. Ukraine’s two nations under one roof,” he west but also within the Yanukovych support All this makes the reconciliation of “two wrote in Voice of America last December. groups. Some of them will continue Ukraines” highly problematic. For two Vitaly Nakhmanovych, a Ukrainian supporting him, and some of them are decades, as another Ukrainian author, historian and Jewish-Ukrainian activist, disappointed by the way he misgoverned Yevhen Zolotariov, comments, two social argues in the January 2014 issue of Kritika Ukraine over the last, almost four years.” realities, Soviet and non-Soviet, had that the reconciliation between these “two Indeed, even though Ukrainians are still coexisted in one country side by side, in nations” is barely possible in the foreseeable divided about geopolitical orientation, parallel worlds, encountering each other future, because the shift in values will take there is something approaching a national only during elections. Non-Soviet Ukraine place slowly if at all. Instead, he contends, consensus about ousting Yanukovych. (In a won a minimal but never decided victory Ukrainian politicians should think about recent poll by the GfK Group, 94 percent over its Soviet rival every time. President accommodation. It might be possible if one supported it in the west and 70 percent in Yanukovych managed within a few years group manages to guarantee some autonomy the south and east; by the same token, 91 to reestablish most Soviet practices and for the other group, with due respect to its percent of Westerners and 70 percent of symbols. The problem, however, is that values. It is very unlikely that authoritarian Easterners condemned the Russian inva- Soviet Ukraine has no raison d’être nor Ukraine can provide such autonomy for sion of Crimea.) resources to exist beyond the USSR or democratically minded Europe-oriented This might be a good time to rid our- some sort of substitute. citizens. But it is quite possible that demo- selves of propagandistic stereotypes and American journalist James Brooke cratic Ukraine could find a way to accom- to reconceptualize Ukrainian cleavages as employed the same metaphor of “two modate its paternalistic, Sovietophile, and primarily ideological rather than ethnic or Ukraines” with a remarkable parallel to Russia-oriented fellow countrymen. This is regional. “There are two political nations, the U.S. conflict between the abolitionists actually what both Latvia and Estonia have with different values and development and slave owners (even though he ascribed, accomplished rather successfully for their vectors, that cohabitate in Ukraine,” Vitaly contrary to Zolotariov, some reconciliatory Sovietophile/Pan-Slavonic fellow residents. Portnikov, a renowned Jewish-Ukrainian intentions to the Ukrainian ruler): “For In a value-based context, all the argu- journalist, argues in Gazeta.ua. These three years as president, Viktor Yanukovych ments that Maidan and the post-Maidan

Photos from the Euromaidan by Vitalii Liamichev (left and right) and Sofia Riabchuk (center)

30 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

Photo by Sofia Riabchuk

government do not represent Ukrainian mandatory for all post-Soviet authoritarians. Mykola Riabchuk, a political and cultural society as a whole and instead deepen Ukraine’s break with the system poses an analyst based in Kyiv, is currently a visiting Ukraine’s ideological divide and political existential threat for the Kremlin and Putin EURIAS research fellow at the Institute polarization, make little sense. Fundamental himself. Hence the hysterical reaction of for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is also issues like human rights, civil liberties, and the Russian media and the Russian mili- vice president of Ukrainian PEN. His most rule of law—everything we subsume under tary’s brutal invasion of Ukrainian territory. recent book, Gleichschaltung: Authoritarian the catchall rubric of “European values”— “The toppling of the Yanukovych regime,” Consolidation in Ukraine, 2010–2012, was cannot be solved by a simple majority vote. Torbakov argues, “created an opportunity published in both Ukrainian and English. To be blunt, no majority can legitimize for a bold political experiment, one largely Riabchuk is a former Harriman Institute slavery, and no split in society can justify aimed at accommodating Ukraine’s multiple Petro Jacyk Visiting Professor. the preservation of totalitarian values. identities and opening up political and “The real political divide in the country economic possibilities to a much broader 1 Source: Кілька тез про ціннісні орієнтації is not that which supposedly separates slice of society. This desire to open up українців. Соціологічна грyпа «Рейтинґ», Ukraine’s western and eastern regions,” society is what strikes at the very heart of Травень 2013, p. 8, 11, 14, 18; http:// contends Russian political analyst Igor Putinism, a philosophy that needs a tight ratinggroup.com.ua/upload/files/RG Torbakov. Instead, Torbakov sees a fault lid to be kept on political expression and _Orientyry_052013.pdf. line, on one side of which we find a num- economic opportunity.” 2 The WVS Cultural Map of the World, http:// ber of new and assertive identities (for Russian aggressive actions may seriously www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder example, liberals, champions of a Ukrainian frustrate Ukraine’s current attempt at _published/article_base_54. civic nation, nationalists both radical and de-Sovietization and the implementation of 3 less radical) and on the other side those profound reforms. But the very persistence As quoted in Robert Coalson, “Yanukovych’s who cling to a post-Soviet identity, which with which Ukrainians, time and again, Base Eroding In Ukraine’s Russophone extends unevenly across Ukraine, but is attempt to complete the unfinished business East,” RFE/RL Newsline, 3 December 2013; concentrated primarily, of the 1989 East European revolutions http://www.rferl.org/content/yanukovych but not entirely, in the east and south. implies that Ukraine’s westward drift is all -east/25188519.html. Torbakov believes that the best frame- but irreversible, and the best thing Russia 4 Євген Золотарьов, Формула революції work for analyzing Ukrainian developments can do is to follow the move rather than try 2014 – від протесту до спротиву, 17 січня is not a West vs. East, or Ukrainophones to obstruct it. □ 2014, http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles vs. Russophones paradigm, but a withering /2014/01/17/7009810/. away of the post-Soviet foundation upon 5 http://eurasianet.org/node/68102. which a peculiar system of authoritarian political practices and crony capitalism rests. He defines this as “Putinism” because it was Putin who perfected the system and made it not just exemplary, but also

harriman magazine ­­ | 31 ­­ The Dancers

The Harriman AND Russian Ballet

The three pieces that make up this section showcase the Harriman a particular emphasis on Russian artists, since the 1960s. The Institute’s ties to an art form to which Russian artists have made Harriman Institute had the good fortune in fall 2013 to mount extraordinary contributions. The pantheon of Russian dancers, an exhibition of her astonishing photographs ranging from early choreographers, and designers truly dominated ballet in the twentieth Baryshnikov in Leningrad to contemporary dancers in twenty- century and continues today. The distinguished accomplishments first-century St. Petersburg. Finally, the profile of Stephen Reidy, a of eminent dance historian Lynn Garafola were recognized last year Russian Institute student in the 1970s, documents his ballet educa- by the Guggenheim Foundation and New York Public Library’s tion that began in Leningrad with a performance by Baryshnikov, Cullman Center, both of which awarded her fellowships for photographed, as it happens, by Alovert. Today, Reidy sits on the 2013–14 to support her research for a biography of Bronislava board of New York City Ballet. Nijinska. Nina Alovert has been photographing dancers, with

32 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

Red Giselle: Arbuzova is dressed in a blood- red costume, which is simultaneously curtain, banner, and scenery. In this bright, minimalist (the entire photograph is held together only by the color red) work we see in concentrated form what distinguishes Alovert from other ballet photographers. In this one work we see how the artist keenly and deeply feels the profound nature of two completely unrelated art forms: photography and ballet. In this work we sense the tradition of the great ballet photographers Barbara Morgan and Max Waldman, and the influence of ballet masterpieces by Martha Graham and Pina Bausch.”

—Mark Serman, in his review “Nina Alovert’s ‘The Dancers’ at Columbia University,” published in Russian Bazaar, November 21–27, 2013.

harriman magazine ­­ | 33 ­­ By Ronald Meyer The Dancers A Photo Exhibition by Nina Alovert

ina Alovert’s “The Dancers,” a brief survey of her dance arrival, Alovert’s photographs appeared in the New York Russian photographs beginning in the mid-60s and early ’70s in daily New Russian Word, and she later became a regular contributor Leningrad and ending with work from the twenty-first to influential dance publications such asDance Magazine, Pointe, N century taken in New York, Paris, and St. Petersburg, was and Ballet Review. on view at the Harriman Institute during the fall 2013 semester. Alovert’s first book,Baryshnikov in Russia, was published by Reviewing “The Dancers” for the Wall Street Journal, William Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1984 and was soon translated Meyers writes: “Her pictures are distinguished by their style and into many languages. This was followed by another seven books, precision; like sports photographers, dance photographers must published in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, devoted to anticipate and have the instantaneous reflexes to capture it. Again dancers Vladimir Malakhov, Yulia Makhalina, and choreographer and again, the dancers in her photos are caught at the apogee of Boris Eifman, among others. In addition, her work appears in a their leap and seem to be floating in air.” number of volumes about dancers and the dance. Photographs by Alovert, a native of Leningrad, began her career as a photogra- Alovert are in the collections of the New York Public Library for pher of the ballet in the 1960s, when she documented the early the Performing Arts, the Theater Museum (St. Petersburg), the performances of future stars Nikita Dolgushin, Natalya Makarova, Public Library (St. Petersburg), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alla Osipenko, and Yury Soloviev. In 1968 Alovert photographed and several private collections. the young prodigy Mikhail Baryshnikov. When the two met soon “The Dancers” is part of the Institute’s ongoing series of exhibits afterward, Alovert made a present of the photographs and the two of art from and about the region that has been running under became fast friends. the direction of Associate Director Alla Rachkov for more than a Alovert, with her mother and two children, immigrated to the decade. The exhibit was curated by Natasha Sharymova (New York United States in 1977. She faced the usual obstacles adjusting to Plus Plus) who earlier brought to the Harriman shows of photo- her new life, even though Baryshnikov, who had defected to the graphs of the writers Joseph Brodsky and Sergei Dovlatov, the latter West three years earlier, helped to smooth the way. Soon after her of which also showcased photographs by Alovert. □

34 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

Diana Vishneva, Studio, Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, 1996 (photo by Nina Alovert)

Opposite page (from left to right): Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Carmen (Bizet/Petit), American Ballet Theatre, Washington, D.C., 1981; Vladimir Malakhov, Dying Swan (Saint-Saens/Mauro de Candia), Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, 2011; Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes, Lady of the Camellias (Chopin/Neumeier), Rehearsal, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, 2011; Mikhail Baryshnikov, Daphnis and Chloe (Ravel/ Murdmaa), An Evening with M. Baryshnikov, Kirov Theatre, Leningrad, 1974 (all photos by Nina Alovert)

harriman magazine ­­ | 35 ­­ Reidy first saw Baryshnikov in Leningrad in the Soviet balletCreation of the World, a performance captured by the young photographer Nina Alovert. Irina Kolpakova and Mikhail Baryshnikov, Creation of the World (Petrov/ Kasatkina, Vasilyov), Kirov Ballet, Leningrad, 1971 (photo by Nina Alovert).

Baryshnikov /Balanchine

36 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

A Profile of Stephen K. Reidy By Ronald Meyer

tephen Kroll Reidy has spent the last twenty-five years as After graduating from Middlebury, Reidy moved to New York a venture capital investor, serving since 1987 as a general in the fall of 1972 for his graduate studies in international affairs. partner at Euclid Partners in New York City. Prior to While still a first-year student he happened upon a job announce- S Columbia Business School (M.B.A. ’78), Reidy earned ment posted at the Russian Institute for USIA (United States his master’s degree in international affairs (’74), also at Columbia, Information Agency) exhibit guides in the Soviet Union. He landed taking courses at the Russian Institute from luminaries Zbigniew the job after a telephone interview in Russian and a follow-up Brzezinski, Seweryn Bialer, and Marshall Shulman. When not meeting in D.C. The USIA had chosen the theme Outdoor Recreation studying Soviet politics and history, the young graduate student, for the 1973–74 American Exhibit to the USSR, and Reidy, a skier, who now sits on the board of the New York City Ballet, took in was assigned to the section on winter sports. The assignment took ballet performances by the Joffrey Ballet, the resident ballet com- him to Moscow, Ufa, and Irkutsk, with two months in each city, pany at City Center during what is now followed by a week for independent considered the company’s golden era. travel. The guides were responsible for Reidy’s ballet education had its begin- setup and striking the installation for nings during his spring semester as a CIEE shipment to the next city—a process that (Council on International Educational brought them into close contact with Exchange) student in Leningrad, living the locals and showed them a different in a student dormitory near the Winter side of Soviet life. The USIA American Palace. It was the first trip to the Soviet Exhibits, which had begun in 1959, were Union for Reidy, a Russian studies major enormously popular. Reidy remembers at Middlebury College, who had chosen that Outdoor Recreation logged 900,000 the school because of its famed Russian- visitors in Irkutsk, a city with a population language program. Reidy viewed learning of one million. Nevertheless, it was a chance the language as a crucial step to studying to speak to Americans and about America the country’s history, politics, and culture; that packed the halls, rather than infor- the fact that the Russian Department mation about sports in the United States. boasted the most flamboyant faculty and Living conditions outside of Moscow held the best parties was merely a bonus. were “atrocious.” Food was hard to come In Leningrad, near the Winter Palace, by outside of the capitals—only cucumbers he became acquainted with an elderly and potatoes in the stores in Irkutsk— woman selling theater tickets on the street, mostly for the ballet and it was getting cold. Medical services seemed backward. So and opera, both of which were novel for the young student from much so that when a fellow guide fell seriously ill in Irkutsk, he was working-class Boston. His ticket seller counseled him to try various evacuated to an army hospital in Germany aboard Henry Kissinger’s performances and would save tickets for him. He fell in love with plane, which flew from Moscow to fetch him. Foodstuffs received the ballet and very quickly focused on that. The first time he saw through the diplomatic pouch, which the guides pooled for festive Mikhail Baryshnikov perform was in the full-length Soviet ballet potlucks, provided some relief from the deficits. The other source The Creation of the World. His girlfriend at the time, Carolyn, who of relief came from the Russian people. Reidy recalls spending is now his wife, followed Reidy to Leningrad that summer and evenings in Irkutsk with a mathematician and his mother, also a bought tickets from the same woman. mathematician, talking about the United States, the Soviet Union,

harriman magazine ­­ | 37 ­­ Russia, and how those evenings made “cold, snowy, muddy, awful” job it was to ensure that broadcast scripts tallied with U.S. foreign Irkutsk almost bearable. Likewise, in Ufa, a fellow guide introduced policy. But all those courses on politics had not prepared him for Reidy to the mother of Rudolf Nureyev, the ballet dancer who had the infighting among the three groups of Russian émigrés at the defected to the West a decade earlier. bureau: the Old Guard from the postrevolutionary days, the World The final adventure of this tour of duty ended with an unau- War II refugees, and the current third wave of Jewish émigrés. The thorized plane trip to Khabarovsk. Five of the guides wanted to upside of the Munich assignment was that the city was awash in leave the USSR through the Soviet Far East for Japan, rather than ballet and opera. Reidy soon realized, however, that the radio job the approved route of returning to Moscow and flying home from was a temporary assignment for him—and indeed, he was down- there. Clutching airplane tickets purchased for them illegally by sized out of a job the following year. Meetings with an economist a Soviet guide, the group of Americans left their hotel after dark whose interest was economic development under various economic and boarded the evening flight to Khabarovsk. Even though they regimes served to interest him more and more in that field. arrived at the only hotel in Khabarovsk without travel documents Returning to Columbia for Business School seemed the next or reservations in the middle of the night, the frightened attendant logical step. He moved back to New York in 1976, now married let them in. They managed to catch the first plane to Japan. to Carolyn, who was starting out in publishing—she’s currently Back in New York in January ’74, Reidy was named an International CEO and president of Simon & Schuster. A literary agent who was Fellow at Columbia and completed his degree that May. Once again representing Russian authors introduced the Reidys to two older the bulletin boards at the Russian Institute served as his employ- gentlemen, connoisseurs of the ballet and opera, whose collection ment bureau, and he found an announcement of openings for of memorabilia included a signed photo of Nureyev and Margot Russian speakers to work in the Munich bureau of Radio Liberty. Fonteyn’s ballet shoes. Their new friends, who lived close to He worked in the Political Department as a kind of censor, whose Lincoln Center, introduced them to both art forms in New York

38 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

City, which for them meant the Met and George Balanchine’s Reidy to become a member of New York City Ballet’s New New York City Ballet (NYCB). They also knew Russia and had Combinations Fund, which has supported the making of 140 new been following Balanchine since his arrival in New York, so they ballets in the last twenty years, 120 of which are in the NYCB had great stories and were in a position to help Reidy and his wife repertory. The Twenty-First Century Choreographers program in understand what they were seeing and how to see it. The two the current 2014 spring season at New York City Ballet is largely couples became friends and went to the theater together. comprised of work, both old and new, supported by the New “In 1976, when I met these gentlemen, NYCB became my Combinations Fund. Reidy firmly believes that new choreography lodestar. There was a Russian underpinning to it all, from which is essential to the continuation of ballet as a growing art form. I started to explore,” Reidy said. Having become a devotee of NYCB will always be “Mr. B’s” company but new dances build Balanchine, he started to look back to Diaghilev, the Ballets Russes, on this Russian-rooted foundation. The idea is not to replicate and all the Russian performers and ballets in the interwar years that but to create. □ became the source of what Balanchine would eventually bring to New York and his creation of NYCB. The transformational figure for Reidy is Balanchine, who wanted to make something distinctly American or that took advantage Opposite page: Principal dancer Sara Mearns and Company in George of distinctly American talents and sensibilities about movement, Balanchine’s Serenade (photo by Paul Kolnik, courtesy of New York City perhaps seeing the fusion of his Russian roots and this American Ballet); below: New York City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Year of the Rabbit, a potential as the future of ballet. Now thirty years after Balanchine’s production made possible in part by generous contributions from members death, there is a body of work that builds on that source and with of the New Combinations Fund (photo by Paul Kolnik, courtesy of New dancers associated with developing it—all of which prompted York City Ballet)

harriman magazine ­­ | 39 ­­ Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina in Fokine’s Schéhérazade. As Garafola writes in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, “Schéhérazade, the seraglio tale that thrilled Paris in 1910, was pure orientalist fantasy” (page 13).

40 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

By Ronald Meyer Lynn Garafola and Her Journey as a Dance Historian

his past academic year Lynn Garafola took classes in modern dance Garafola, professor of dance at and jazz, but there was still no connection Barnard College, held fellowships between “a practice I enjoy and the larger T from the John Simon Guggenheim question of dance.” That connection Foundation and New York Public Library’s would come when Garafola enrolled in the Cullman Center to support her research graduate program in comparative literature for a biography of Russian choreographer at CUNY. She was struck, for instance, by Bronislava Nijinska, sister of Vaslav, the the startling coincidence that two towering legendary dancer of the Ballets Russes. For figures of modernism, Joyce and Proust, met the Guggenheim Fellowship she was among for the first time after a performance of 175 artists, scholars, and scientists chosen Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1922. Garafola from a group of almost 3,000 applicants. started going to a great deal of ballet while Prior to sitting down with Garafola in a grad student and says that she truly April 2013 to talk about her work in prog- discovered ballet in the 1970s, which, as ress on Bronislava Nijinksa, I had observed it happens, was a golden age for ballet her guest teach a class on Serge Diaghilev’s and dance in general in New York. There Portrait of Lynn Garafola by Ballets Russes and its place in Russian art. seemed to be an endless supply of down- Daria Rose Foner The low-tech presentation (color Xerox town dance, modern dance and ballet— handouts of stage sets and costumes, VHS and tickets were relatively cheap, which was tapes instead of PowerPoint) did not get important for a graduate student earning in the way of the polished delivery of a her keep translating legal briefs and docu- capsule history of Diaghilev’s innovations ments from the Romance languages. in ballet (for example, that it was Diaghilev Mikhail Baryshnikov defected in 1974, who established the prominence of the following in the steps of two earlier Soviet choreographer, which we take for granted dancers: Natalia Makarova and Rudolf today, or that he hired easel painters to de- Nureyev. With Baryshnikov and Makarova sign costumes and décor)—with unscripted at American Ballet Theatre, and across the asides on a wide assortment of topics ranging plaza at Lincoln Center another Russian from the first production ofSleeping Beauty émigré, George Balanchine, creating in 1890 to the Joffrey repertoire in the American ballet for the twentieth century, 1970s. It was quite a performance! set to music by his fellow Russian Igor A native New Yorker, Garafola studied Stravinsky, among others, the Russianness ballet as a child with a Russian teacher, of ballet was not in dispute. A few blocks who ultimately turned out to be of Armenian south, the Joffrey Ballet, the resident descent—but of course the premium, then ballet company at City Center, presented as now, was on ballet as a Russian art. Later, an interesting repertoire for the future as a Spanish major at Barnard College, historian of the Ballets Russes, with good

harriman magazine ­­ | 41 ­­ One of the great new pieces to the puzzle was Bronislava of all matters dance: concerts, the ballet stage, revues, performances in the West Nijinska’s Early Memoirs, interesting both as the last End, letters from New York and Paris, and memoir of a major figure from the Diaghilev circle and as even advertisements—all of which taken together gave Garafola an idea of what was a life story penned by a woman. happening in the world of dance and the place of the Ballets Russes in that world. After her initial research in Paris, London, and New York, Garafola came to the productions of Petrushka, Afternoon of a to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. She began realization that a new history of the Ballets Faun, and eventually the reconstruction of reading broadly among the writers of the Russes was called for—not the influence Rite of Spring—works that were not being period and came to the conclusion that study she had originally proposed to her mounted by ABT or in the repertoire of the writers most influenced by the Ballets dissertation committee. She was faced with the touring Soviet companies. All this Russes, for example, Jean Cocteau and the constructing a new edifice and realizing served to engender a real interest in the Sitwells, were not the ones she wanted to new limitations; in other words, to realize Diaghilev period and Garafola’s desire to write about. the utter inadequacy of the story as it had understand that sensibility. She then managed to get a grant to travel always been told. She began her work in Upon realizing that all her free time to England and France to conduct research the important dance archives, including seemed to have very little to do with her in archives and libraries. She read deeply the Dance Division of the New York Public graduate work, it became clear to Garafola in the Bloomsbury Group and other circles Library, but since she had no training as a that perhaps a study of the picaresque that were a part of the Ballets Russes world, historian, she did not quite know how to was not what she should be doing. The including a serious reading of a number cope with an archival collection. She read Joyce-Proust meeting at the Ballets Russes of British writers on ballet, and discovered newspapers on microfilm—and still refers prompted her to rethink her subject. A that what we in the West perceive as the to these copies that are now approaching close friend suggested over a glass of wine Diaghilev wisdom, in fact comes from this their half-century. Garafola was moving that perhaps she should consider working group of British writers on ballet that had into uncharted territory about which there on something about dance and literature, become something of a coherent group were no secondary sources. Her reading and, in Garafola’s words, that marked the in the 1930s. Having installed herself in helped to broaden the story, yet at about “beginning of my journey as a dance histori- the British Library, she read the Dancing the same time she realized that she was up an.” Her dissertation was to be an influence Times, an extraordinary monthly magazine against a brick wall—the Russian language. study, typical of comp lit dissertations at published from 1908 until 1930, that is, a Taking time out to learn Russian was the time, that would focus on responses by year after the collapse of the Ballets Russes. not an option—that would come later. English and French writers and intellectuals The magazine consisted of a potpourri Meanwhile, she was already reviewing

Left to right: Posed group of dancers in the original production of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, showing costumes and backdrop by Nicholas Roerich (1913); Vaslav Nijinsky in Afternoon of a Faun (1912) by Leon Bakst; portrait of Serge Diaghilev by Valentin Serov (1909)

42 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ PROFILES

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS and writing about dance to have a bit of Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan an income, not to mention that she was University Press, 2005) already quite far along in her dissertation. But in order to understand where all this Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet, editor (with E. was coming from, she could do the next Foner) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) best thing: read the publications of Slavists José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir, editor (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan who had themselves researched in the University Press/University Press of New England, 1999) Russian archives, and in that way fill in the background and give herself a sense The Ballets Russes and Its World, editor (New Haven: Yale University of “other stories.” Press, 1999) One of the great new pieces to the puzzle was Bronislava Nijinska’s Early Memoirs, Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet, editor interesting both as the last memoir of a (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New major figure from the Diaghilev circle and England, 1997) as a life story penned by a woman. Here was an absent voice that came to light “Of, By, and For the People: Dancing on the Left in the 1930s,” editor, during the height of second-wave feminism Studies in Dance History 5(1) (Spring 1994) in the 1970s, which Garafola now was in “The Diaries of Marius Petipa,” editor and translator, Studies in Dance the position to incorporate into her history History 3(1) (Spring 1992) of the Ballets Russes. Garafola’s dissertation committee, seeing André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties, editor, how far removed her work was from the with J. Acocella (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1991) usual comp lit dissertation, was hesitant to let her go forward to the defense stage. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) But she was wisely counseled to stick to her guns, and indeed she defended her thesis and “the next day was off and writing Awards and Honors about the Futurists.” Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (Oxford University John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, 2013–14 Press, 1989), the book based on Garafola’s dissertation, at once established her cre- Culllman Center Fellow, Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New dentials as a dance historian, with equal York Public Library, 2013–14. emphasis on both parts of that label. It is Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005)

Kurt Weill Award, for The Ballets Russes and Its World (2001)

Independent Publishers Book Award, for Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet (2000)

CORD Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication, for José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir (1999)

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1993–94)

Scholar in residence, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities (1991–92)

De la Torre Bueno Prize, for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1990)

Social Science Research Council Fellowship (1978–79) Bronislava Nijinska, upon graduation from the Fulbright Fellowship, Ecuador (1968–69) Imperial School of Ballet, St. Petersburg (1908)

harriman magazine ­­ | 43 ­­ characteristic of her approach to dance New Art.” The festival presented different history that Garafola begins her study by versions of the ballet on stage and pub- setting the scene in Russian history— lished a lavishly illustrated volume on the the striking workers converging on the cultural impact of Nijinsky’s ballet, to Winter Palace, on January 9, 1905, Bloody which Garafola contributed an essay on Sunday—and then moves to the student the century of “Rites.” strikes at the Conservatory of Music. Which brings us back to Nijinska and The critics were not slow in recognizing Garafola’s current work in progress. Though Garafola’s historical approach: “At last, the it is a new project, it represents a return muse of history tests all her modernized to a figure that piqued her interest in the apparatus on Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets” 1970s, but then the timing had not been (Alastair Macaulay, New York Times); right and Nijinska’s papers were still in “breathtaking array of new documentary family hands—they are now housed in the materials, . . . a breakthrough, an epoch- Library of Congress. maker” (Richard Taruskin, New Republic). In her article “Bronislava Nijinska in Six books followed Diaghilev’s Ballets Revolutionary Russia,” Garafola quotes Russes. I will mention only a few. Dance for Carolyn Heilbrun’s observation that well a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet, into the twentieth century “it continued edited with her husband, historian Eric to be impossible for women to admit into Foner (Columbia University Press, 1999), their autobiographical narratives the claim was published in conjunction with a major of achievement, the admission of ambition, exhibition at the New-York Historical the recognition that accomplishment was Society, for which Garafola served as guest neither luck nor the result of the efforts or Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance curator. Garafola has also curated exhibits generosity of others” (Writing a Woman’s Lynn Garafola on Jerome Robbins, Diaghilev, and Italian Life). Nijinska wrote herself into ballet history Wesleyan University Press (2005) dance for the New York Public Library for through her famous brother, and she ISBN 978-0-8195-6674-4 the Performing Arts. She is the editor of presents a varnished version of their rela- José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir (Wesleyan tionship. It is well known that Nijinska was Available from Amazon.com, Barnes University Press, 1999), for which she received originally cast by her brother as the Chosen & Noble, directly from the publisher, the CORD Award for Outstanding Dance Virgin in his Rite of Spring and that she and select bookstores. Publication. Garafola’s most recent book, was removed from the cast because of her Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance pregnancy. What is not generally known (Wesleyan University Press, 2005), gathers is that she danced during that same period together her essays and reviews. And while in other ballets—just not in her brother’s the topics are wide-ranging, there’s a certain work. It was not Nijinsky’s concern for her underlying sense of mission that holds the health that motivated her dismissal. It is disparate pieces together. As Legacies makes Garafola’s intention to tell the real story clear, while she never left the Ballets Russes and to recognize properly the extraordinary far behind, she became equally well known achievements of one of the twentieth cen- for her work on American dance and the tury’s great choreographers, the creator of intersection of politics of the Left and Les noces and Les biches, ballets that are still dance, in particular, as well as the issue of performed today. □ women and gender and ballet. In connection with the centennial cele- brations of the ballet, Garafola has recently made a special study of The Rite of Spring, lecturing in both the United States and Europe on “A Century of Rites: The Making of an Avant-Garde Tradition.” In spring 2013 she took part in the Bolshoi Theater’s “Century of the Rite of Spring—Century of

44 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories

edited by Cathy Popkin

INTRODUCTION Cathy Popkin, Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities, importance of the art of translation, Popkin follows her “Introduction” is the editor of the new Norton Critical Edition of Chekhov’s with comparison passages taken from various translations and short Selected Stories, published in early 2014. A thick brick of a book, biographies of the translators, with notes on their translation prac- the new Chekhov delivers 735 pages of stories, letters, criticism, tices, rather than the usual practice of acknowledgments hidden chronology, and bibliography, all prefaced by Popkin’s “Introduction,” in tiny type on the copyright page. Annotations to the individual from which we print two sections below: “How to Read Chekhov” stories also highlight key differences among the translators’ strategies. and “How to Read Chekhov in English.” What truly distinguishes As an example of the newly commissioned works, we offer this new Chekhov is Popkin’s strategy of highlighting the art of trans- Katherine Tiernan O’Connor’s “A Little Game.” O’Connor, best lation. The fifty-two stories are the work of twenty-one translators. known for her translation of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Twenty-seven translations have been chosen from the rich history co-translated with Diana Burgin, insists that “contrary to popular of Chekhov in English translation, and the remaining twenty-five belief, Chekhov may be more difficult to translate than Bulgakov.” were commissioned expressly for this volume. To emphasize the —Ronald Meyer

harriman magazine ­­ | 45 ­­ Excerpts from the “Introduction” by Cathy Popkin are reprinted from Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories: A Norton Critical Edition, selected and edited by Cathy Popkin. Copyright © 2014 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Katherine Tiernan O’Connor’s translation of “A Little Game” is reprinted from that same edition with the kind permission of the translator.

From the “Introduction” by Cathy Popkin Famously speculating about the nature of human knowledge, Chekhov noted more than once that, much as we crave certainty and How to Read Chekhov (especially moral) clarity, life confronts us on far more ambiguous Any work of literature worth its salt will accommodate, even and tentative terms and places us on shakier ground. Between the reward, a variety of approaches and inspire a wide spectrum of certainty that God exists, for instance, and the opposite conviction interpretations. Even so, the how-to-read question reasserts itself that there is no God, Chekhov envisions a huge expanse, a wide, with particular insistence in the face of Chekhov’s short stories for a wide field spanning the distance between those two antithetical and number of reasons, not the least of which is the idiosyncratic form unequivocal positions. It takes wisdom and courage to negotiate of the stories themselves. the murky middle, to tolerate the infinite complexity and shades of For one thing, they can be disconcertingly short, especially the gray in the amorphous space between guilt and innocence, sickness early pieces published in humor magazines, with strict word counts and health, atheism and belief. For readers unnerved by such ambi- for quick laughs—and prompt payment. Should these be read as guity, Chekhov’s stories cannot help but force the issue of how they serious literary works? Physical dimensions aside, some of the stories should be read. also catch readers off guard because their subject matter can be, Paradoxically, though, despite all these potential stumbling well, so trivial. A clerk sneezes; someone disposes of a cockroach— blocks, Chekhov’s stories are not at all hard to read; indeed, they what’s so interesting about that? make for remarkably enjoyable—even seamless—reading. At first Then there are Chekhov’s formal innovations. If we are accus- glance, anyway, they seem clear and uncomplicated. And if they tomed to short stories beginning with an exposition, shaped by are short on pages or scope or details or dénouements, neither do rising action, culminating in an event, and concluding with a they throw up a lot of obstacles along the way—nothing tenden- dénouement, we may find ourselves temporarily derailed by Chekhov, tious or dogmatic, no extraneous verbiage; they look to be perfectly who advised aspiring writers to throw away their opening pages, straight-forward (if inconclusive) tales. whose action may just as well repeat as escalate, whose events are The devil, it seems, is in the details, especially the odd ones frequently a matter of dispute, and who has been credited with that crop up with no obvious relevance to the story and that feel cultivating the so-called zero ending. Where do these stories take particularly incongruous in Chekhov’s super-spare prose. Why, for us, and where do we go from there? instance, should Chekhov specify that a chair in someone’s attic His stories are open-ended in another respect as well: more intent is missing one leg (“Sweetheart”)? Or that a girl happened to be on posing questions than on answering them, disinclined to preach carrying a piece of dark blue cloth when her suitor came to propose or prescribe, Chekhov made no secret of his reluctance to stake out (“The Teacher of Literature”)? Chekhov’s earliest critics pointed to clear positions vis-à-vis the world he depicts with such care. Even extraneous details such as these as evidence of the writer’s lack of when a story’s events are dramatic and the outcome decisive, the discernment. Increasingly, though, scholars have come to view such meaning of what has happened usually is not: judgment is with- puzzling elements as key—but the key to what? held, no moral is implied. It’s not the writer’s business to make such Some scholars argue that, given Chekhov’s characteristic reti- pronouncements, Chekhov averred. Let the readers act as jurors cence, if something appears in the text, he must have put it there and figure things out for themselves. for a reason; we are justified in assuming, in other words, that If Chekhov leaves his jury to deliberate without the benefit of every element we encounter in his streamlined tales is intentional an explicit charge, it is only partially because determinations of this and therefore purposeful. After all, Chekhov is reported to have sort are not in his job description; they are also beyond his purview. remarked (albeit about drama) that if there’s a gun hanging on the wall in Act I, it had better go off by the closing curtain, or it ought never to have been hung there in the first place. And if every gun is meant to be there, then every gun must be meaningful; nothing is included by accident, and nothing superfluous is included. “No detail Why read Chekhov’s stories? Because they is without meaning in Chekhov’s great masterpieces,” maintains enlarge our capacity for understanding and Robert L. Jackson. To read Chekhov well is thus to consider every word, even the apparently random ones, to scrutinize the story for awaken our compassion. patterns and clues, to unearth subtle references, to delve beneath

46 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

the deceptive simplicity of the surface for access to the complexity at play in the depths; or even to consider the effects of the language itself, to attend with care to the verbal surface for its sounds and cadences and etymological rhyme, reading the prose essentially as one might read a poem—for what it does, the effect it has, and for what each component—every piece of dark blue fabric—contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Others object to this “totalizing” approach on the grounds that the operative principle in Chekhov’s prose is just the opposite— randomness—and if something in one of his stories looks unrelated to anything else, that’s because it is. Sometimes a gun is just a gun, an incidental piece of the material world signifying nothing beyond its own existence; it’s hanging there because it’s there, and it would be perverse to hang a meaning on it. The function of Chekhov’s eccentric detail, in other words, is not to mean but to be—and in this stubbornly “meaning-free” existence to model something about the nature of existence itself. His prose embodies his own radically new worldview, an understanding of life in the world as chaotic, subject to accident and entropy. Chekhov’s liberation from the shopworn assumptions of unity and purposefulness is the very quality that makes his art modern and non-dogmatic, argues Alexander Chuda- kov; to transform everything into a symbol or a sign of something else would be to miss the very point. Whichever view is closer to the truth, both are onto something. And in spite of their antithetical assumptions, they are united in a common preoccupation with how the stories work; this, in fact, is the basis of their respective arguments, and it has lent both force and substance to the debate. The works of criticism excerpted in this volume come from both sides of the critical divide as well as everywhere in between, and have been selected expressly for their salient contributions to the ongoing controversy about how to read Chekhov well. The first section, “Approaches,” contains essays that address this question explicitly. But arguing about Chekhov’s prose in the abstract can only get you so far; Chekhov himself abhorred sweeping generalizations, and his work resists them. Not coinciden- tally, some of the liveliest scholarship on Chekhov consists of close readings of individual stories. Thus, the second cluster of essays, “Interpretations,” has been compiled to demonstrate what such concrete readings might look like—and in some cases a single story looks strikingly different from divergent points of view. Whatever their perspective, all of these inspired readings confirm that interesting things emerge when you pay exquisite attention. The most engaging interpretations are re-readings, considerations that read “against the grain” and suggest not only that things may not be as simple as they seem, but also that Chekhov’s stories work in mysterious ways. If the meaning of a single detail triggers such fruitful disagree- ment in the context of an individual work, questions about the relationship of the part to the whole arise with equally interesting Anton Chekhov in 1897 results in considerations of how any single story by Chekhov might relate to all his other ones. Indeed, for maximum enjoyment and

harriman magazine ­­ | 47 ­­ appreciation, readers are urged to read both in detail and in plural, to consider both how these “motley” stories work and how they work together. They certainly awaken our awareness of recurrent motifs, sounds, structures, and allusions; we also sense that we are in the presence of abiding ethical questions. Each story connects in suggestive ways to all the others, and every one of them resonates more vibrantly when viewed in connection with everything else. Then again, the present volume comes nowhere close to contain- ing “everything else.” Furthermore, although it includes a whole spectrum of representative works—from shorter to longer, from first to last, from the frankly comic to the positively lyrical—not even a comprehensive selection is neutral. In choosing the stories and letters that appear here, I have no doubt produced a certain Chekhov, one that I particularly like, since the fifty-two works in this volume represent some combination of acknowledged master- pieces and personal favorites. Happily, Chekhov’s stories illuminate one another in any combination, not to mention the light they shed on the complexity of human relations and the wonders of life in the world. Note that Chekhov’s keenest insights come in understated forms, and the stories especially reward quiet focus and sustained attention. While his prose goes down easily, do not confuse an easy read with a quick one. These may be small bites, but they are not fast food. Every story is remarkably rich and de- serves to be savored. Enjoyment is very much to the point, as it happens, and figuring out how to read Chekhov goes beyond the rarified concerns of academics who compile anthologies or produce scholarly interpre- tations. To pursue honest inquiry, to puzzle our way through, to engage constructively with the other, to gain access to somebody else’s pain, to recall that we are all part of—not separate from—the whole: this is part of what Chekhov’s storytelling strives to do. For those who read Chekhov because they are writers themselves, this sense of relatedness reveals his artistry. For those who read Chekhov for pleasure, this relatedness is surely its source. Why read Chekhov’s stories? Because they enlarge our capacity for understanding and awaken our compassion. Because they call upon us to make connections of all sorts. Because connecting the dots and making sense reminds us of the potential for meaning and beauty. Because trying to work out what gives a story shape and orders its material—the very activity of constructing and constru- ing meaning—enriches our existence. Because figuring out what counts in (life) stories reminds us to think about what is import- ant, however unprepossessing it may appear at first blush. Because precisely in wondering how to read Chekhov productively, we are already living deeply and well.

How to Read Chekhov in English First, with a high degree of confidence. Of the fifty-two stories collected here, twenty were cherry-picked from published transla- tions by Rosamund Bartlett, Peter Constantine, Ann Dunnigan, Constance Garnett, Ronald Hingley, Patrick Miles and Harvey

48 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

Pitcher, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and Avrahm The devil, it seems is in the details, Yarmolinsky. Each one is, in my judgment, about the best there is. Another twenty-five are brand-new translations, commissioned especially the odd ones that crop up with expressly for this volume from Hugh Aplin, Carol Apollonio, no relevance to the story and that feel Rosamund Bartlett, Antonina W. Bouis, Robert Chandler, Peter Constantine, Jamey Gambrell, Anna Gunin, Michael Henry Heim, particularly incongruous in Chekhov’s Jerome H. Katsell, Ronald Meyer, Katherine Tiernan O’Connor, super-spare prose. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, plus a few that I’ve done myself. The remaining seven are Constance Garnett’s translations that I have revised substantially. Far from being problematic, these differences are a resource. Second, the stories can be read with or without reference to the Some translations stay so close to the original and reproduce its notes on translation. The translations stand on their own and idiosyncrasies so faithfully that they are tailor-made for close require no apparatus. Any commentary that accompanies them is readings. These are especially useful for instructors who do know meant for readers who want to know more about the specific form Russian teaching students who may not. And while these also read in which Chekhov is being delivered to them in a given translation, well, others might contain even livelier prose. or are looking for a bit of insight into the process that produced Quite aside from the opportunity these differences create for us the English text. For readers with particular interest in translation, to choose translations that suit our varied purposes—differences the Translators and Their Work section (p. xlix) provides a more born of the diverse ways these translators understand the purpose detailed introduction to the individual translators and their respective of their task—lurks the thorny question of how the translators goals and strategies. understand the purposes of the texts themselves. Translation, like The twenty-one translators represented in this collection bring any other form of reading, is an act of interpretation. I cannot widely divergent priorities, purposes, and presuppositions to their think of a better reason, especially in a Norton Critical Edition, translation work. Their approaches range from, toward one end that two translators might be better than one. of the spectrum, the most “text-directed”—those that place the highest premium on remaining as close as possible to the original, framing fidelity in terms of replication of the originaltext (even at Anton Chekhov the cost of sacrificing smoothness in the target language)—to the A Little Game1 most “reader-directed” approaches at the other end—those that aim Translated by Katherine Tiernan O’Connor to bring the text to the greatest possible extent into the target reader’s orbit, willing if need be to sacrifice fidelity to text in the interest A clear winter noonday . . . The frost is hard, it crackles, and of reproducing the original reader’s experience of it. What is more Nadenka, who is holding me by the arm, has a silvery glaze coating important—retaining the original word, or using one that will get the curls on her temples and the down on her upper lip. We are the kind of laugh the original one did? Ideally one would be able to standing on a high hill. Stretching down from our feet to the do both; but if not? ground below is a sloping plane that reflects the sun, just like a Temporal distance presents additional challenges; some trans- mirror. Beside us is a small sledge2 upholstered in bright-red cloth. lators, worried about anachronism, scrupulously avoid words “Let’s go down, Nadezhda Petrovna!” I beg. “Just once! I promise that have come into use only after the work was written; others you we’ll remain safe and sound.” view updating the language as an essential part of a translator’s But Nadenka is afraid. The distance from her small boots to the job. Some maintain that a translation should retain a measure of bottom of the ice hill seems terrifying to her, like a fathomlessly strangeness, that readers should not be hoodwinked into forgetting deep abyss. She freezes and holds her breath when she looks down, that the text is foreign and that they are reading in translation; when I simply invite her to get into the sledge, for if she takes the others are determined to make the English prose as transparent and risk of flying into the abyss, what will happen! She will die, she’ll go natural as possible—sometimes even when the original was neither. out of her mind. Some are attentive to sound, rhythm, and punctuation and attempt “I beg you!” I say. “You shouldn’t be afraid! Don’t you see, that’s to convey the musicality of Chekhov’s prose; some, conversely, are faintheartedness, cowardice!” insistent that sound translations cannot work and ought not be Nadenka finally gives in, and I can tell by her face that when she attempted. Others sense that attempting to replicate anything at all does, she’s in fear for her life. I seat her, pale and trembling, in the only dooms a translator to failure and that translating calls less for sledge, put my arm around her and together we plunge down into fidelity than for creativity. None of the translations here lie at any of the abyss. these extremes, but they do occupy just about the whole continuum The sledge flies like a bullet. The shattered air beats in our faces, in between them. roars, rips, whistles in our ears, painfully and maliciously stings

harriman magazine ­­ | 49 ­­ us, wanting to tear our heads off. The force of the wind makes it We go down for the third time, and I see her looking at my face, impossible to breathe. It seems as if the devil himself has seized studying my lips. But I press a handkerchief to my lips, I cough, us in his claws and with a roar is dragging us down into hell. and when we are midway down the hill, I manage to get out: Surrounding objects blur into one long, madly rushing streak . . . “I love you, Nadia!” In just another minute, it seems—we’ll perish! And the mystery remains a mystery! Nadenka is silent, thinking “I love you, Nadia!” I say under my breath. about something . . . I take her home from the ice park, she tries to The sledge starts making less and less noise, the roaring of the walk more softly, slows her steps, waiting all the while to see if I’ll wind and the hissing of the runners are no longer so terrifying, we say those words to her. And I see how her soul is suffering, how it is can breathe again, and finally we’re at the bottom. Nadenka is half- an effort for her not to say: dead. She’s pale, barely breathing . . . I help her get up. “It can’t be that it was the wind speaking! And I don’t want it to “I won’t go down again for anything,” she says, looking at me have been!” with wide, terror-stricken eyes. “Not for anything in the world! The next morning I receive a note: “If you’re going to the ice I almost died!” park today, then come get me. N.” And from that day on, I begin In a short while she recovers and now looks into my eyes in a each day by going to the park with Nadenka and then saying the questioning way: did I say those four words, or did they just come very same words every time we fly down in the sledge: to her from the rush of the wind? And I stand next to her, smoking “I love you, Nadia!” and studiously examining my glove. Soon these words become a habit for Nadenka, like wine or She takes my arm, and we take a long stroll near the hill. The morphine. She cannot live without them. True, she’s just as afraid mystery, apparently, is giving her no peace. Were those words said as she always was to fly down the hill, but now the fear and the or not? Yes or no? Yes or no? It is a question of pride, honor, life, danger lend a special fascination to the words of love, words which, happiness, a very important question, the most important in the as before, constitute a mystery and torment her soul. The same two world. Impatiently, sadly, Nadenka looks at me in a penetrating suspects remain: the wind and I . . . Whichever of the two of us is way, gives disconnected answers, waits to see if I’ll say something. making her a declaration of love she does not know, but it is likely Oh, what a play of emotions on that sweet face, what a play! I can at this point that she no longer cares; it matters not which cup you see her struggling with herself, needing to say something, to ask drink from, so long as you become intoxicated. me something, but she can’t find the words, she feels awkward, Once at noon I went alone to the ice park; mingling with the terrified, hindered by her joy... crowd, I see Nadenka approaching the hill, her eyes searching for “You know what?” she says, without looking at me. me . . . Then she timidly goes up the steps . . . She’s terrified to go “What?” I ask. alone, oh, how terrified! She’s as pale as the snow, trembling, she “Let’s . . . go down again.” walks as if she’s going to her execution, but walk she does, without We go up the steps to the top of the hill. Again I seat the pale, turning around, with determination. Obviously, she had decided, trembling Nadenka in the sledge, again we fly into the terrible finally, to carry out a test: will she hear those astonishing sweet words abyss, again the wind roars and the runners hiss, and again when when I’m not there? I see her, pale, her mouth agape with horror, the flight of the sledge reaches its noisy peak I say under my breath: as she sits down in the sledge, closes her eyes, and then after saying “I love you, Nadenka!” farewell forever to the earth, she starts to take off . . . “Hissss . . .” When the sledge is coming to a stop, Nadenka looks back at the go the runners. I don’t know if Nadenka hears those words . . . I see hill we have just come down, peers into my face, listens attentively only that when she gets up from the sledge she’s exhausted, weak. to my voice, aloof and emotionless, and her whole being, every- And it is clear from her face that she doesn’t know herself whether thing about it, even her muff and her hood, expresses extreme she heard something or not. Her terror, while she was hurtling bewilderment. And written on her face is: downward, made it impossible for her to hear, to distinguish “What’s going on? Who uttered those words? Did he, or did it sounds, to understand . . . only seem that way?” But now it’s March and spring is here . . . The sun is becoming This uncertainty unnerves her, makes her lose patience. The poor gentler. Our ice hill darkens, loses its luster, and finally melts. We girl doesn’t respond to my questions, frowns, is on the verge of stop going sledding. Poor Nadenka no longer has anywhere where tears. she can hear those words, and no one to say them, since no wind “Isn’t it time for us to go home?” I ask. can be heard, and I am getting ready to go to Petersburg—for a “But I . . . I like doing this,” she says, turning red. “Can’t we go long time, probably forever. down another time?” Once, a day or two before my departure, I am sitting at dusk in She “likes” doing this, but meanwhile, as she gets into the sledge, the small garden that is separated from the yard where Nadenka she is, as she was the previous times as well, pale, breathless with lives by a tall nail-studded fence … It’s still fairly cold, there is still fear, trembling. snow underneath the manure,3 the trees are dead, but the scent

50 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

of spring is in the air, and the rooks, settling in for the night, are cawing loudly. I go over to the fence and peer through a crack in it for a long time. I see Nadenka come out on the porch and cast a sad, yearning glance up at the sky . . . The spring wind blows directly into her pale, despondent face . . . It reminds her of that wind that roared at us those times on the hill, when she heard those four words, and her face becomes sad, very sad, a tear falls down her cheek . . . And the poor girl stretches out both her arms, as if imploring this wind to bring her those words one more time. And I, having waited for the wind, say under my breath: “I love you, Nadya!” My God, what is happening to Nadenka! She lets out a cry, smiles a huge smile and stretches her arms out to the wind, joyous, happy, so very beautiful. And I go off to pack . . . This happened a long time ago. Nadenka is married now; she was married off, or got married herself—it makes no difference— to the secretary of the Board of the Nobility,4 and she already has three children. The time when we used to go sledding together and the wind brought her the words “I love you, Nadenka,” has not been forgotten; it is now the happiest, most moving and beautiful memory of her life . . . But now that I’m older, it’s a complete mystery to me why I said those words, why I played such a game . . . □ Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories: 1886 (revised 1899) A Norton Critical Edition Edited by Cathy Popkin W. W. Norton & Company (2014) 1 By maintaining the narrator’s persistent use of present tense, O’Connor ISBN 978-0-393-92530-2 reproduces the sensation that readers are experiencing everything— including flying downhill at terrifying speed—right as it is happening, Available from Amazon.com, Barnes & together with the narrator and Nadenka. Noble, directly from the publisher, and The title, Shutochka, is usually translated literally as “A Little Joke.” select bookstores. O’Connor renders it as “A Little Game” instead, feeling strongly that “Joke” implies something far too one-sided to correspond to what is actually being “played” in the story. The new title, along with O’Connor’s lexical choices emphasizing that each of the characters has a “mystery” to confront, reori- ents us, allowing us to consider who is playing at what—and with whom.

2 Sledge: a conveyance that slides on runners. Commonly refers to a horse- drawn sleigh of the sort that replaces carriages on wheels during the winter snows. The sledge in this story, however, is small and toboggan-like, with upholstered seats, mounted on runners and used for downhill sledding.

3 In garden plots, manure was spread on top of the snow so that when the snow melted the fertilizer would be absorbed by the soil.

4 Elected body that appointed trustees for the estates of nobles legally pro- hibited from controlling their property—minor heirs, debtors, the insane.

harriman magazine ­­ | 51 ­­ Gary Shteyngart (photo courtesy of Random House)

52 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

By Masha Udensiva-Brenner Leningrad, Queens, Gary Shteyngart’s Columbia Little Failure

ary Shteyngart, the award-winning author of three critically acclaimed novels—The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, and Super Sad True Love Story—recently pub- G lished a memoir, Little Failure. Titled after a nickname given to the author by his mother, the book takes us on a simultaneously heart-wrenching and hilarious journey through Shteyngart’s childhood and young adulthood. Born in Soviet Leningrad, where he spent seven years as a sickly, asthmatic child fiercely devoted to Lenin and his rodina (motherland), he immigrated with his parents to New York as a Jewish refugee in 1979. The family settled in Kew Gardens, Queens, where he discovered the evils of the Soviet Union and the glory of Ronald Reagan. Shteyngart’s parents, raised as secular Jews, enthusiastically embraced the Jewish faith upon immigrating and sent him to a local Hebrew School, where his peers tormented him for his Soviet heritage, strange clothing (often fur), and the tendency to mutter in Russian under his breath. He made it through the experience, earning at least minimal respect from his classmates by writing satirical tales and reading them aloud in school. When he enrolled in Stuyvesant High School—his first day there was one of the first times he’d set foot in Manhattan— he soon realized the folly of his Republican values. He later went to Oberlin College, majored in political science to please his parents, and started writing The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. He finished the book nearly ten years later in New York, while working as a writer of brochures for the New York Association for New Americans (NYANA). It was published in 2002, when he was thirty years old. I met Shteyngart, a member of the Harriman Institute faculty teaching in the M.F.A. writing program at Columbia’s School of the Arts, on February 11, 2014, at the Columbia Journalism café, Little Failure: A Memoir just a month after publication of Little Failure, and three months Gary Shteyngart after the birth of his son, Johnny. Tired from flying around the Random House (2014) world—it was Day 49 of his 158-day book tour—he feverishly ISBN 978-0-679-64375-3 unwrapped a cough drop. “This is my best friend, this Halls men- tholyptus eucalyptus something or other,” he said, popping it into Available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, his mouth, “Mmmm . . . ahhhh . . . ahhhh . . . bring it on!” directly from the publisher, and select bookstores.

harriman magazine ­­ | 53 ­­ Gary Shteyngart talking with Harriman director Timothy Frye (right) in Frye’s office before the author’s reading and discussion at the Harriman Institute (photo by David Dini, Columbia University Photography)

Masha Udensiva-Brenner: You mentioned on NPR’s “Fresh Air” All of a sudden you land and there’s a flying saucer waiting for you. that your goal for this memoir was to create an “almost historical And the cars; the Chevrolet Corvette . . . it looked like an airplane record of this bizarre generation” that left the Soviet Union for the missing its wings! Cereal—in the book I talk about cereal quite a United States. Can you elaborate? bit—the fact that it comes in this little container. Amazing!

Gary Shteyngart: There really was a kind of iron curtain that Udensiva-Brenner: Did you have any idea that these things doesn’t exist anymore. Current immigrants from the middle class existed? Did your parents prepare you for it? have access to the same crap we have—the iPhones, the iPads, the same kind of clothes. We had no inkling of what to expect. What Shteyngart: They didn’t know. Who knew? Nobody had any idea. we had was an ABBA cover band record—one of those plastinkas [records] that look like they’re made out of some kind of rubber— Udensiva-Brenner: As a kid you admired Lenin. Then, once you and the song “Money, Money, Money.” Nowadays people come, immigrated, your parents told you you’d been duped about Lenin many of them know English, many of them are wealthier, they and the greatness of the Soviet Union. How did you feel? have a lot of access to the idea of the West, and not to mention the actual goods, the actual records, but we didn’t. And that kind Shteyngart: Great betrayal. But, you know, you start looking for of immigration is very rare. Even back then. Certainly if you were other stuff to fill the void. Soviet immigrants, whether they are middle class in India you still had an idea of what Western goods young or old, are brought up with this idea of power being very looked like. So, there will never be anything like that again. important, and when we moved to America we became entranced with Republican politics, for example, or conservative politics in Udensiva-Brenner: Until people start emigrating from North Israel, like Likud. There was always this very great respect for what’s Korea. considered strength. I remember as a child my parents would make fun of Jimmy Carter because he was perceived as a weak leader. Shteyngart: Exactly, that may be the last one left. It would be When I came to America, I was also, like all of the people around interesting to see. Even immigrating from North to South Korea— me, quite in love with Reagan. and there’ve been a lot of studies on the people that escaped—the adjustment period is very difficult. Both in the way the South Udensiva-Brenner: You’ve said you wrote this memoir partly in Koreans perceive them [North Koreans], and their inability to order to get a better understanding of your parents. What did you function in a hugely technological society. discover?

Udensiva-Brenner: What kinds of things were you surprised to Shteyngart: Well, I had the overall feeling of reconciliation with find in the U.S.? the past. Growing up—it was tough. I didn’t know why they behaved the way they did. I didn’t understand where their insults Shteyngart: The new Pan Am Terminal. It was so different from came from, the general feeling of depression and anxiety. In returning the crappy Leningrad airport, Pulkovo—this tiny, cramped space. to Russia you sort of see the root of those emotions—it’s a

54 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

depressing and anxious country. Just walking down the street you duction to the fact that writing can have an impact, but a limited see people look angry for no good reason, or vacant, or upset in a impact. And then the world sort of clicks back into place, the class way that few people in America would look unless they just found system, and people being who they’re supposed to be. out they have cancer. It’s a very difficult existence. America is a much softer country than Russia, but my parents remained tough Udensiva-Brenner: Did you feel that way after your first book, people. That’s why they had so much difficulty in my becoming a The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, was published? writer. My mother was so adamant that I become something else, a lawyer . . . And that’s where the term “little failure” was coined. Shteyngart: I was shocked that it has had the shelf life that it has. That, you know, people would actually show up to my readings. Udensiva-Brenner: When you were five, your grandmother And that it was translated into many languages. I was living in encouraged you to write. She paid you with a slice of cheese for Rome after it came out, so I would tour to different countries. every page you produced and you ended up with a 100-page novel I remember reading in Prague—that’s where Russian Deb was called Lenin and His Magical Goose. How much did that experience based—and thinking, it can’t be! I was walking through the streets contribute to your becoming a writer? and there was a writers’ festival, and my name was on the list with, you know, Nadine Gordimer and all these other people, and I was Shteyngart: The most important thing was reading. The fact that thirty years old, maybe thirty-one, and I was just shocked that that I was reading Nils and the Magical Geese [The Wonderful Adventures could happen. of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf] at the time, that was probably even more important. I loved the way the language worked and I wanted to Udensiva-Brenner: Your parents read Russian Deb, which do the same thing. That’s how it starts; you want to imitate. But contained many autobiographical details, and said: “Wow, we had the fact that I was being rewarded and that somebody loved me for no idea you had such an unhappy childhood.” How did they feel doing this was very important. I think that’s why so many writers about the memoir? do this—you want to be validated. Shteyngart: I sent them a copy, but they haven’t said anything yet. Udensiva-Brenner: And writing helped you validate yourself in When there’s a Russian translation we’ll talk about it. Hebrew school. Udensiva-Brenner: Do they get upset when you write about this Shteyngart: It really helped. It moved me away from this complete sort of stuff? Russianness and hatred to this kind of, you know, this crazy writing guy. I mean they were Jews after all, so humor and storytelling Shteyngart: I don’t think they understand it. My father in particular. mattered. That was good. To him, being Jewish is the highest value. He doesn’t understand how Hebrew school could have been traumatic for me. These are Udensiva-Brenner: You first entertained your classmates with my people. “Don’t write like a self-hating Jew”—that will always be a science fiction novel calledThe Chalenge [sic] based largely on my father’s mantra. your Republican politics. Did they catch on to the Republican connotations? Udensiva-Brenner: Why did you decide to omit from the memoir pretty much everything after your first book deal? Shteyngart: You know it’s interesting; those kids were mostly from Democratic families. Did they catch on? I don’t remember. I know Shteyngart: The memoir thrives on conflict—any story you write as we got older and toward high school that I would constantly get thrives on conflict—and after the publication of my first book the into these arguments with . . . there were a lot of cool girls who conflict began to end. Not completely, but not in a way that I think were Democrats. It seemed like fun, almost. would make for terribly interesting work.

Udensiva-Brenner: A defining moment for you in school was Udensiva-Brenner: You’ve been going to psychoanalysis four times when you wrote the Gnorah—your own, humorous version of the a week for almost twelve years . . . Torah. Can you tell me a little bit about how it felt to finally be at the center of attention? Shteyngart: It’s almost over. The memoir was a kind of good accounting of my life until now; the child is a good indication Shteyngart: Well, the way writing works is that you’re at the center that I can progress, and you know, move on in the world. Things for a few weeks, a few months, and then it really moves on to the are pretty stable. Now it’s a long process of disengagement latest Cyndi Lauper album, or something. It was a good intro- called “termination.”

harriman magazine ­­ | 55 ­­ Udensiva-Brenner: How has psychoanalysis affected your writing? Shteyngart: No, I do a lot of research. This book required a lot of research talking to my parents, obviously, my friend Jonathan, Shteyngart: Almost everything I wrote in the memoir was said in friends from high school and college, looking through all the letters analysis, sort of publishing things into the air—it was a nice test run. that I’d sent to JZ, my college girlfriend, and she had thankfully kept a lot of them . . . I was so stoned at Oberlin it was hard to Udensiva-Brenner: How many drafts of it did you go through remember anything. before you submitted it to your editor? Udensiva-Brenner: Do you face any challenges while you’re Shteyngart: Just one. writing?

Udensiva-Brenner: Did you have to revise much after that? Shteyngart: Well, time. I teach one semester at Columbia. Do a lot of travel writing, which I find helps. And I’m always giving lectures Shteyngart: No! And my editor is a tough cookie. With Super Sad or whatever at other universities. we went through God knows how many drafts and the whole thing was completely reworked and restructured. So many sci-fi elements Udensiva-Brenner: What’s your writing regimen? and other things were cut, but here he did work, but it wasn’t a lot at all. I mean, with a novel like Super Sad, there are so many plot Shteyngart: Four hours a day. elements. Here I know the plot; it’s my life. Udensiva-Brenner: Every day? Udensiva-Brenner: Have you ever fought with an editor? Shteyngart: No, I mean look, 150 days I’m running around like Shteyngart: It’s never been an issue, I have to say. It’s strange, but a crazy. You know, out of a four-year cycle publishing a book, one my editor at Random House is terrific—he teaches at Columbia year is publicity and about a third of the year is either teaching or too. Sometimes there are space constraints in a magazine article travel writing or touring or reading at other universities. So you get and things have to be cut. That’s sad, but you know, what are you two-thirds of three years; so that’s about two years of actual work gonna do? You can say, “I think I prefer this section to that if you’re for every four-year cycle. That’s at about two pages a day, so let’s gonna cut it,” but overall it’s been great. I’ve never fought. say that the first draft is 400 pages; so about 200 days for the initial When I was just starting out, there was a piece commissioned draft, and then however long it takes to do the editing. about the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And it wasn’t just me who was commissioned, it was a bunch of us, and I’m not gonna name the Udensiva-Brenner: Do you go back and edit your daily two pages newspaper—let’s just say that it was a very well-known one. And, after you write them? from what I was told, they cancelled the whole thing. All of us. We had all written for them. And what I was told was that they did Shteyngart: Yes, I do. It’s like, if you shoot a film, you go through it because it would be a disaster for their relations with the Bush this reel first, so you can go in to see what you’re gonna shoot the White House. But that was the only time that anything I’d ever next day. The dailies they’re called. So something like that. You edit written had been cancelled like that. Those were scary times. the two pages you wrote before, and then you write two new ones, and then the next day you edit them. Udensiva-Brenner: Is it true that you never get writer’s block? Udensiva-Brenner: Do you outline? Shteyngart: Yeah. Shteyngart: It depends. With the memoir, obviously not; it was Udensiva-Brenner: So you just sit down and get right into it? just linear, a straight shot. Absurdistan had a huge outline because I didn’t know what was gonna happen. Super Sad I thought about it,

“ With satire you hide so much behind humor and you can always get away from things if you don’t feel comfortable. With a memoir . . . you can’t hide from the truth. With a satire you lead with humor. Here, humor was just one of the things in my arsenal.”

56 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ FEATURED

Gary Shteyngart (left and right) and Timothy Frye (center) during the reading and discussion at the Harriman Institute (photos by David Dini, Columbia University Photography)

but then when the two parts sort of started speaking to one another some deputy of the Ministry of Privatization trying to get me to it became much easier. I kind of let Lenny and Eunice run with it. steal funds from some California charity, on and on. And then Super Sad was fun to write because it was my first Udensiva-Brenner: How was the switch from fiction to memoir? departure from the Russian-Jewish voice. Cause there was a Korean- American voice in there. That was so enjoyable; I would like to do Shteyngart: Well, with satire you hide so much behind humor and something like that for the next one. Not necessarily Eunice’s voice, you can always get away from things if you don’t feel comfortable. but a woman’s voice, and somebody who’s not Russian, definitely. With a memoir . . . I mean I hope the memoir is still funny . . . but a lot of it, you can’t hide from the truth. With a satire you lead with Udensiva-Brenner: You’ve mentioned plans to write an humor. Here, humor was just one of the things in my arsenal. international thriller . . .

Udensiva-Brenner: What’s your favorite of the books you’ve Shteyngart: Yup. written so far? Udensiva-Brenner: Will it be humorous? Shteyngart: I like them all for different reasons. The first one was the most tender to write, because I was so young. And I didn’t Shteyngart: Everything will always have humor in it, but how know if it would get published or not, so I was writing for either much humor is the question. The humor is what makes the tragic anyone or no one, and it felt like this holy task. With the second parts stand out. They help each other. To write one without the book it became work, you know, deadlines. But I enjoyed writing other is beyond my imagination. Absurdistan because it was my most out and out satire. It was really more a work of journalism; so much of it, the parts in the Caucasus, Udensiva-Brenner: Do you feel pressure when you start writing a was based on meeting crazy people. new book to live up to your last one?

Udensiva-Brenner: So you went to the Caucasus before you wrote it? Shteyngart: Oh yeah, it never ends. There’s a scene in the Sopranos where Paulie is not making enough money and he goes to Silvio Shteyngart: I spent a summer there. The book was as grounded in and he says, “But Tony and I go way back.” And Silvio says, “You’re reality as anything I’d ever written. People say, “Oh my God, it’s only as good as your last envelope.” And that’s what being in the like duck soup or something,” but it wasn’t; this is the sad reality creative arts is like: you’re only as good as your last envelope. □ on the ground. All of it is true. Hookers looking for “Galiburton” at the Hyatt in Baku, being threatened with a kindjal in Tbilisi,

harriman magazine ­­ | 57 ­­ In Memoriam

Robert L. Belknap, 1929–2014 from different disciplines together in a common intellectual enterprise. Robert L. Belknap, professor emeritus The intellectual excitement that Robert of Russian in the Department of Slavic Belknap generated in his classrooms is Languages, died on March 17. Professor legendary. His repertory ranged over the Belknap was a magisterial teacher of canon of Russian literature. He taught literature in true Columbia tradition, a Literature Humanities in the Columbia guiding intellect and scholar in the field of Core Curriculum for more than fifty years. Robert L. Belknap Russian literature, a committed educator Students chose him for the Van Doren who devoted his energy and vision to Great Teacher Award in 1980, and alumni making Columbia an institution to be chose him for the Society of Columbia The Robert L. Belknap Dissertation Prize proud of. From start to finish, he was a Graduates Great Teacher Award in 2010. will be awarded as merited to disserta- man of integrity, wit, wisdom, and good He is justly known for the lasting impact tions in the Slavic Department that are will. He will be sorely missed and fondly he had on students—from first-year of exceptional quality. Himself a brilliant remembered by all who have had the honor undergraduates in Literature Humanities to scholar, Bob Belknap promoted excellence of knowing him and learning from him. dissertation advisees. Teaching Nineteenth- in others. To his students as well as to A native New Yorker, born December Century Russian Literature: Essays in Honor many other members of the field, he was 23, 1929, Robert Belknap was educated of Robert L. Belknap, a volume edited by a wise mentor, a pragmatic adviser, a per- at Princeton University, the University Deborah A. Martinsen, Cathy Popkin, and ceptive critic, a trenchant editor, an erudite of Paris, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Irina Reyfman, is a tribute to his profound commentator, a scintillating interlocutor, State University, and Columbia University influence on the academic field. and a true advocate. We establish this prize (Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures, Over the course of his career, Professor to honor Bob Belknap for his work and to 1960). Known the world over as an expert Belknap assumed leadership roles in a recognize dissertations of great distinction. on Russian literature, on Dostoevsky, in number of realms at Columbia: He served Donations toward the establishment of particular, he was the author of two major as the chair of the Slavic Department, the this prize may be sent to the Department studies on Dostoevsky’s masterpiece: The director of the Russian (now Harriman) of Slavic Languages, Columbia University, Structure of “The Brothers Karamazov” Institute, the acting dean of Columbia 1130 Amsterdam Avenue, Mail Code (1967, reprinted 1989) and The Genesis College, the chair of Literature Human- 2839, New York, NY 10027, attention: of “The Brothers Karamazov” (1992), both ities, and the director of the University John Lacqua. Checks should be made out of which appeared in Russian translation. Seminars. As an administrator, he had a to Columbia University with “Belknap Literary Plots, based on the Leonard talent for getting the job done well and for Prize” in the memo line. Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures that creating a spirit of cooperation. Professor Belknap delivered in 2011, is He is survived by his wife, Cynthia forthcoming from Columbia University Whittaker, a Russian historian, and other Press. Together with Columbia colleague family members. Richard Kuhns, Robert Belknap wrote A memorial service will be held at Tradition and Innovation: General Columbia on Friday, September 12, at Education and the Reintegration of the 2 p.m. in St. Paul’s Chapel. University (1977), which reminds us that interdisciplinary understanding, tolerance, and humility are central to a whole—or, as they put it, reintegrated—university. Indeed, one of Robert Belknap’s special strengths was his ability to draw people

58 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ In Memoriam

William E. Harkins, 1921–2014 Harkins taught in the Slavic Department at Columbia for the next forty years. William E. Harkins, professor emeritus One colleague who had worked with him of the Department of Slavic Languages for forty years described Bill Harkins as at Columbia University, died on May 17, “absolutely honest” and “always kind,” 2014, at the age of 92. Among Slavists, noting that Bill “always bore far more than Bill Harkins was a true renaissance man: his fair share of the burden, administrative, an expert on Russian prose, a specialist in pedagogical, and emotional, of working William E. Harkins Slavic folklore, one of the first American together with a group of people different scholars to do serious work in Czech enough from one another to make a strong literature, the author of a monograph on department.” At Columbia, Bill Harkins William Harkins was an expert in many Karel apek, a translator from Czech, was chair of the Slavic Department and areas and a versatile and innovative Slavist. Č the author of the Dictionary of Russian director of the Russian (now Harriman) In honor of his multifaceted contribution, Literature, the author of a Czech language Institute, in addition to serving in or on we are establishing a colloquium that textbook and coauthor of a widely used a number of other organs, including the celebrates the cultural as well as disciplinary textbook of Russian grammar, and a University Senate and the Committee variety within the Slavic field. The new promoter of regional studies. Generations on Instruction. He was very active in Harkins Colloquium, run by graduate of Columbia students remember him professional associations in the Slavic field students, will provide a forum beyond fondly for his contribution to their training at large and served as president of the the classroom in which they pursue on all these fronts, as well as for his good American Association of Teachers of Slavic their intellectual interests. The aim is to will, his attention to their development as and East European Languages. His work in reimagine Slavic studies both by drawing writers, and his having made them attuned promoting Czech studies at Columbia and our own faculty and students together and to the interplay of word and image in at large deserves particular mention. by enhancing our links to individuals and Slavic culture. In 2000, his students and Bill Harkins’s commitments and activi- groups beyond the department. Funds will colleagues in the field honored him with ties extended beyond the Slavic field. be available for graduate students to pursue a Festschrift volume entitled Depictions: He had a special interest in Japanese initiatives of collective interest, host speak- Slavic Studies in the Narrative and Visual prints and served twice as the president ers, gather informal groups, or organize Arts (edited by Douglas M. Greenfield). of the Japanese Art Society (formerly more formal events. Donations toward the His colleagues were profoundly grateful Ukiyo-e Society). establishment of this colloquium may be to him for his generous service to the Survivors of William Harkins include sent to the Department of Slavic Languages, Slavic Department, the Russian Institute, Hideo Kidokoro, his longtime companion; Columbia University, 1130 Amsterdam the University, and the Slavic field at John W. Harkins, his brother; two Avenue, Mail Code 2839, New York, large. He played an important role in nieces, Mary Ann Williams and Rebecca NY 10027, attention: John Lacqua. making Columbia an important center Candelario; and many cousins and grand- Checks should be made out to Columbia for Slavic studies. nieces and grand-nephews. University with “Harkins Colloquium” Born in 1921 in State College, A memorial service will be held at in the memo line. Pennsylvania, William Harkins received Columbia on Friday, October 17, at 3 p.m. his B.A. degree from Pennsylvania State at the Harriman Institute, International University. After military service, he did his Affairs Buildings, 420 West 118th Street, graduate work in the Slavic Department 12th Floor. at Columbia and received his doctorate in 1950. His dissertation, published as a book, was The Russian Folk Epos in Czech Literature, 1890–1900. Professor

harriman magazine ­­ | 59 ­­ Alumni & Postdoc Notes

Alumni & Postdoc Notes

Mark Pekala (M.I.A. and Harriman .usrussiasocialexpertise.org/#fellowships). Certificate, 1983) has been the U.S. Since graduation, Justin has worked on Mark Pekala ambassador to the Republic of Latvia issues including interethnic relations in since 2012. In his twenty-five years with Serbia and journalism and the rule of the State Department, Mark has served law in Russia. He and his wife live in in Warsaw, Brussels (at NATO), Tallinn, Washington, D.C., where they recently Paris, and now Riga. In Washington had a son. assignments, Mark has served on the Russia Desk, in the State Department Operations Alexa Voytek (MARS, 2013) is working Center, as director for Russian affairs on at the international corporate practice at the National Security Council staff, and Ketchum, doing PR work and providing as a deputy assistant secretary of state for communications counsel for the Russian European and Eurasian affairs. He also government and Gazprom. Katherine E. Young taught graduate courses at Georgetown University on U.S.-Russia relations and Jessica Teickenson (née Teicher) (Human European security. Mark’s most recent Rights/Harriman Certificate, 2009) publication is “Latvia: Out of the Crisis, currently works as the human resource Coming into Its Own” in the Fall 2013 specialist at the United States Agency for issue of The Ambassadors Review. International Development (USAID) Office of Transition Assistance (OTI) Katherine E. Young’s (M.I.A./Harriman, in the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict 1985) Day of the Border Guards, a and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA). collection of poetry about Russia and the Teickenson serves as a technical expert Justin Gilstrap former Soviet Union, was selected for in OTI’s Management and Operations publication as part of the 2014 University Division. She guides OTI staff through of Arkansas Miller Williams Prize series. HR benefits and regulations, manages the In the summer of 2013, Young was office’s performance evaluation process, invited to speak on translation theory facilitated the first-ever OTI Training at the Translator’s Coven, convened by for Supervisors of United States Personal Robert Chandler and Oliver Ready at Service Contractors (USPSCs), and St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. Young’s organized the first-ever PSC Benefits translations of poet Inna Kabysh are Fair. In 2012–13, Teickenson served as forthcoming in a dual-language iPad vice president of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, edition that includes text, audio, and Transgender (LGBT) and Pride in Foreign Alexa Voytek video. You can find more information Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA), the officially about Young on her website: www recognized employee resource group .katherine-young-poet.com. of LGBT and allied employees in U.S. foreign affairs agencies, and works to Justin Gilstrap (SIPA/Harriman achieve full equality (in policy, treatment, Certificate, 2008) is currently managing benefits, etc.) for its members serving in the fellowships component of the the United States and abroad. Teickenson U.S.-Russia Social Expertise Exchange, provided USAID leadership with essential facilitating U.S.-Russian collaboration post–Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in twelve areas of pressing interest (www guidance, which later served as a model for

60 | ­­ harriman magazine­­ GIVING

broader Office of Personnel Management 2013), which is shortlisted for ForeWord (OPM) LGBT policy for the broader Review’s 2013 Best Book of the Year Award federal government. Before USAID, (Adult Nonfiction History). The reviewer Jessica Teickenson Teickenson worked at the Public Interest for the Times Literary Supplement writes: Law Institute, now PILnet, where she “The context for Scattered is complex and coordinated PILnet’s fellowship program remains controversial in both Poland and for human rights advocates from Russia, Ukraine. Yet Reilly’s narrative, written in Serbia, Nigeria, Cameroon, China, Nepal, short vignettes, is clear and balanced, and and Indonesia. she successfully weaves the wider history into a rich fabric containing details of We also want to congratulate Diana everyday life. . . . The result is a short, but Howansky Reilly, former staff associate for skillfully crafted synthesis of family memoir the Harriman’s Ukrainian Studies Program and micro-history that is as interesting for and graduate of the Columbia Journalism its uncovering of a neglected tragedy as for School, on the publication of her well- its portrait of a little-known culture.” received monograph Scattered: The Forced Relocation of Poland’s Ukrainians after World War II (University of Wisconsin Press, Diana Howansky Reilly

Giving to Harriman

The Harriman Institute relies on the generosity of individuals like you who share a belief in our core mission to promote the study of Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe in this ever more globalized era, and to train specialists who bring in-depth regional knowledge and understanding to a wide variety of career and life paths.

Please join with us in giving back to the Harriman Institute. Visit www.giving.columbia.edu, call 212-854-6239, scan the QR code below, or use the enclosed envelope.

We thank our generous contributors for their continued support of the Harriman Institute’s mission. Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID NEW YORK NY Permit No. 3593 420 West 118th Street, 12th Floor, MC 3345 New York, NY 10027